Poems 


IRIS 

TREE 


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THE  LIBRARY 

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THE  UNIVERSITY 

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POEMS  BY 

IRIS  TREE 


THE  author  returns  thanks  for 
permission  to  use  in  this  col- 
lection of  her  poems,  those  which 
have  appeared  in  Poetry,  Vanity 
Fair  and  the  "Wheels"  Anthology. 


HEAD  OF  IRIS  TREE 


By  Jacob  Epstein 


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Poems 

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Iris  Tree 


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Curtis    Moffat 


New  York:  John  Lane  Company 

LOHDOK;JOHN  LANE   THE  BODLE/ HEAD 

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Copyright,  iqiq, 

John  Lam;  Company 


Press  of  J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 
New  York,  U.S.  A. 


CONTENTS 


ROCKETS  AND  ASHES 

"You  Preach  to  Me  of  Laws,  You  Tie  My  Limbs" 
"We  Are  the  Caretakers  of  Empty  Houses"  . 
"From  Far  Away  the  Lost  Adventures  Gleam"  . 
"Give  Me,  O  God,  the  Power  of  Laughter  Still" 
"Winding  Down  the  Street  in  Wearied  Gaiety" 
"Tranquillity  Stirred  by  a  Sudden  Spasm" 

"I  Could  Explain" 

"I  Feel  in  Me  a  Manifold  Desire"     . 

"Silence" 

"I  Should  Like  to  Say  to  the  World" 

"You  Pass  as  in  a  Drugged  Delirium" 

"O  Faces  that  Look  so  Coldly  at  Me" 

"I  See  Myself  in  Many  Different  Dresses" 

"There   are   Songs   Enough  of  Love,  of   Joy,  of 

Grief" 

"How  Often,  When  the  Thought  of  Suicide" 
"It  is  Still  Something  to  have  Cheated  God" 
"What  Words  that  Move   on   Wings   in  a   Long 

Drift" 

"I  Think  Myself" 

"The  Adored,  Wild,  Strange,  Irresistible 

A  Rose 

"Like    Flocks    of    Tired    Birds    When    Autumn 

Comes"  

"Oh,  Just  Beyond  the  Curve  of  Ideal  Quest" 
"Ah!  You,  from  the  Small  High-Walled  Acre  of 

Your  Lives" 


PAGE 
II 

12 

13 
14 
15 
17 
18 

19 
20 

21 

22 

23 
24 

25 
27 
28 

29 
30 

31 

32 

33 
34 

35 


493270 


ROCKETS   AND  ASHES   (Continued) 

PAGE 

"Mouth  of  the  Dust  I  Kiss,  Corruption  Absolute"  36 
"The  Curtains  are  Drawn  as  though  it  still  were 

Night" 37 

Black  Velvet 38 

Nerves 39 

"My  Pain  has  All  the  Patience  of  a  Nun"     .       .  40 

"The  Scandal-Monger  After  All  is  Right"     .       .  41 
"Woods    of    Brown    Gloom    Sombring    with    the 

Hush  of  Death" 42 

"I  Feel  So  Much  Alone" 43 

The  Complex  Life 44 

"Shall  We  Be  Christened  Poets,  Children  of  God"  46 

"When  I  Am  Weary  at  the  Antic  Chance"     .       .  47 

Moods 48 

SMOKE 

"Now  is  the  Evening  Dipped  Knee-Deep  in  Blood"  53 

"  Blow  Upon  Blow  They  Bruise  the  Daylight  Wan  "  54 

"A  Ragged  Drummer  Rides  Along  the  Street"     .  56 

Zeppelins 58 

"O  Flattery,  Imposture,  Battle  Show"     ...  62 
"What  Will  Happen  to  the  Beggar,  and  the  Sinner, 

and  the  Sad" 63 

"If  I  Were  What  I  Would  Be,  and  Could  Break"  64 

Holy  Russia 65 

"How  Deeply  Nurtured  is  Your  Foolishness"       .  67 

"Of  All  Who  Died  in  Silence  Far  Away"   ...  68 

"And  Afterwards,  When  Honour  Has  Made  Good"  69 

"Pity  the  Slain  that  Laid  Away  Their  Lives"       .  70 

vi 


FLAME 


"You  Have  Understood  so  Little  of  Me,  and  My 

Adoration" 

"Lulled  are  the  Dazzling  Colours  of  the  Day" 
"Washed   at   My   Feet   by  the   Curded   Foam   of 

Sluggish  Waves" 

"My  Poems  Cannot  Laugh.    They  are  the  Voice" 
"On  the    Hill  There   is  a  Tavern,   Long-Loved, 

Well-Remembered" 

"Oh  Canst  Thou  Not  Hear  in  My  Heart  All  Its 

Whispering  Fears" 

"As  in  the  Silence  the  Clear  Moonlight  Drips" 
"I  Can  but  Give  Thee  Unsubstantial  Things" 
"I  Have  No  Other  Friend  but  Thee"   . 
"Bodies  Heaving  Like  Waves" 
"Your  Face  to  Me  is  Like  a  Beautiful  City' 
"Oh!  Why  Will  You  Not  Let  Me  Love  You" 
"My  Devotion  Kneels  to  You"    . 

Islands 

"Many  Things  I'd  Find  to  Charm  You" 


LAMPLIGHT  AND   STARLIGHT 

Lamp-posts 

London        

"Slowly  the  Pale  Feet  of  Morning" 
"What  Have  I  to  Do  With  Them" 
"Among  the  Crumbling  \k<  hes  of  Decay" 
"Asa  Nun's  Face  from  Her  Black  Draperies' 
"The  Sun  is  Lord  of  Lii  e  and  Colour" 

Bahama  Islands       

Thoughts  OF  London 


PAGE 

75 
77 

78 
79 

80 

81 

83 

84 

85 
88 

89 
90 

92 

93 
94 


97 

98 

100 

101 

103 

105 
106 

107 

108 


Vll 


LAMPLIGHT  AND  STARLIGHT  (Continued) 

PAGE 

Streets 109 

"Laughter  and  Singing  Come  With  the  Morning"  113 

"In  the  Night  I  Hear  My  Loneliness  Calling"       .  114 

Sunday 115 

"The  Leaves  are  Singing,  and  the  Sea"     .       .       .116 

"How  Soundly  Sleepeth  the  Fool"     ....  117 
"Moonlit  Lilacs  Under  the  Window"     .       .       .118 

"Old  Woman  Forever  Sitting" 119 

"Loneliness  I  Love" 120 

«ZI  Met  an  Indian 121 

"From  the  Fathomless  Depth  of  My  Boredom"       .  124 

"Lolling  in  Snow,  Like  Kings  in  Ermine  Coats"  125 
"The    Roots    of   Our    Longing   are    Probing   the 

Heart  of  Night" 126 

Vahdah 127 

"Starlight  Silences" 128 

"The  Mountain  is  an  Emperor" 130 

"I  Know  What  Happiness  Is" 131 

"Long  Hath  the  Pen  Lain  Idle  in  My  Hand"       .  133 

"I  Lay  My  Heart  on  a  Stone" 134 

"The  Cold  Light  Steals  Into  My  Soul"    .       .       .135 

"The  Caravans  of  Spring  are  in  the  Town"    .       .  136 

"I  Dread  the  Beauty  of  Approaching  Spring"        .  137 

To  My  Father 139 

To  My  Mother 140 

'London  Grows  Sad  at  Evening"        ....  142 

Ah!  the  Spring 143 

The  Undertone  of  the  Volga  Boat  Song     .       .  144 


•  • » 

viu 


ROCKETS  AND  ASHES 


YOU  preach  to  me  of  laws,  you  tie  my  limbs 
With  rights  and  wrongs  and  arguments  of  good, 
You  choke  my  songs  and  fill  my  mouth  with  hymns, 
You  stop  my  heart  and  turn  it  into  wood. 

I  serve  not  God,  but  make  my  idol  fair 

From  clay  of  brown  earth,  painted  bright  with  blood, 
Dressed  in  sweet  flesh  and  wonder  of  wild  hair 

By  Beauty's  fingers  to  her  changing  mood. 

The  long  line  of  the  sea,  the  straight  horizon, 
The  toss  of  flowers,  the  prance  of  milky  feet, 

And  moonlight  clear  as  glass  my  great  religion, 
And  sunrise   falling  on  the   quiet   street. 

The  coloured  crowd,  the  unrestrained,  the  gay, 

And  lovers  in  the  secret  sheets  of  night 
Trembling  like  instruments  of  music,  till  the  day 

Stands  marvelling  at  their  sleeping  bodies  white. 

Age  creeps  upon  your  timid  little  faces 

Beneath  each  black  umbrella  sly  and  slow, 

Proud  in  the  unimportance  of  your  places 
You  sit  in  twilight  prophesying  woe. 

So  dim  and  false  and  grey,  take  my  compassion, 

I  from  my  pageant  golden  as  the  day 
Pity  your  littleness  from  all  my  passion, 

Leave  you  my  sins  to  weep  and  whine  awayl 

1914 


1 1 


WE  are  the  caretakers  of  empty  houses, 
The  moon  leans  her  slender  body  against  the  door, 
But  the  lock  is  jarred  with  rust. 
The  sun  looks  in  through  the  window, 
But  its  closed  shutters  are  as  blinded  eyes. 
Our  souls  are  full  of  dead  and  beautiful  things 
Like  bowls  of  potpourri, 
A  dust  of  petals 
Rustling  through  the  tired  fingers  of  a  ghost. 

1918 


12 


FROM  far  away  the  lost  adventures  gleam, 
The  print  of  childhood's  feet  that  dance  and  run, 
The  love  of  her  who  showed  me  to  the  sun 
In  triumph  of  creation,  who  did  seem 
With  vivid  spirit  like  a  rainbow  stream 
To  paint  the  shells,  young  blossoms,  one  by  one 
Each  strange  and  delicate  toy,  whose  hands  have  spun 
The  woven  cloth  of  wonder  like  a  dream  .   .  . 
The  row  of  soldiered  books,  authority 
Sharp  as  the  scales  I  strummed  upon  the  keys, 
The  priest  who  damned  the  things  I  dared  not  praise, 
Rebellion,  love  made  sad  with  mystery — 
And  like  a  firefly  through  the  twilit  trees 
Romance,  the  golden  play-boy  of  my  days. 

1917 


13 


GIVE  me,  O  God,  the  power  of  laughter  still, 
I  shall  have  need  of  humour,  deftest  foil 
Against  the  army  of  infuriated  pride, 
Against  the  shields  of  reason,  and  the  spears 
Of  savage  moments,  sharp-edged  bitterness; 
Against  the  blazoned  armour  of  intolerance, 
And  all  the  flags  of  sentiment  waved  aloft.  .   .  . 

Love,  Humour,  and  Rebellion,  go  with  me, 

Three  musketeers  of  faithful  following. 

We  will  fear  nothing. — Is  not  laughter  brave, 

That  unconcerned  goes  rippling  through  despair? 

Is  not  rebellion  brave,  that  fiercely  moves 

Against  the  buttressed  prisons  of  the  world? 

And  is  not  love  the  bravest  of  them  all, 

So  frail  to  hold  his  white  hands  up  to  Heaven 

While  the  red  fists  are  threatening  all  around, 

And  hate  is  beating  on  the  battledrums? 

As  d'Artagnan  upon  a  starved  grey  horse 

Goes  singing  ballads  on  adventurous  roads, 

I  ride  my  fancy  blithely  into  danger 

To  throw  my  gauntlet  at  the  feet  of  pride 

And  stick  my  roses  in  the  cap  of  Love.  .  .  . 

1916 


H 


WINDING  down  the  street  in  wearied  gaiety,  the  barrel- 
organ  dribbled  out  its  song 
Merged  with  the  thud  of  feet  forever  dallying  indifferent 

and  indefinite  along. 
The  houses  stood  like  rows  of  cripples,   some  paralysed, 

some  hunch-backed  and  some  bent  with  age, 
They   seemed    at   war,   their   chimneys   threatening,    their 

brows  hung  heavy  in  a  sombre  rage. 
Crab-like  the  children  crawled,  while  always  hammering 

above  their  heads  the  scolding  shrewish  tongue; 
They  grew  as  bloodless  flowers  unflourishing,  waxen  and 

pale  from  out  the  dust  and  dung. 
Above  I  saw  the  strip  of  sunset  fluttering,  even  as  washed- 
out  rags  upon  the  line, 
I  listened  to  the  sparrows  twittering,  and  the  hours  ticking 

in  a  slow  decline. 
Then  beaded  on  the  hem  of  evening,  the  coloured  lights 

were  threaded  here  and  there, 
Till  proud  with  sweets  and  plumes  and  oranges,  the  shops 

grew  brilliant  in  the  tinsel  glare. 
Grey  was   the   death-bed   of  the   twilight,    shuddering  the 

faint  hands  of  the  day  stretched  to  the  night, 
Fending  it  off,  or  feebly  wavering  over  the  pallid  glints  of 

stolen  light. 
And  grey  the  faces  that  were  gathering  among  the  fallen 

ashes  of  the  day, 
And  red  the  faces,  yellow,  flickering,  under  the  lamps  upon 

the  long  highway. 
And  some  were  gashed  with  smiles,  and  quaint  grimaces  of 

hate  and  pain  and  hunger  and  despair, 
And   some   wore    coloured    hats   and    meek    frivolities,    limp 
s~      ribbons,  and  false  pansies  in  their  hair, 
But  all  were  cold,  and  all  seemed  passionless;  there  shone 

no  zest  or  splendour  in  their  li\es, 
Nor  hope   in   anything  but  holidays,   or  watching   funerals, 

or  taking  wives. 

*5  /  , 


I  dared  not  think,  for  truth  rose  horrible,  slapping  the  face 
with  coarse  uncaring  hand, 

But  like  them  cheated  into  merriment,  I  wilfully  refused  to 
understand; 

Turned  me  away  from  wan-eyed  poverty,  trod  pity  under- 
foot, oh,  danced  on  grief, 

Bade  the  crowd  sing  and  fill  my  desolation,  bade  them  be 
glad  and  hide  my  disbelief. 

Strange  we  so  love  the  world — for  presently,  out  of  my 

window  looking  on  the  city, 
I  blessed  the  night,  and  the  roofs  slumbering  all  huddled, 

and  I  felt  no  shame  nor  pity 
For  all  our  dusty  days  of  journeying  amid  the  wreck  and 

ruins  of  our  dreams, 
Meandering  in  a  bleared  forgetfulness,  where  lethe  laps 

the  wharf  of  sleeping  streams. 
I  only  breathed  the  air,  mtensified  by  the  ascending  breath 

of  million  lungs, 
And  heard  the  labouring  metropolis,  quickened  by  whispers 

of  a  million  tongues; 
And  felt  a  king  of  splendid  loneliness,  and  felt  an  atom  of 

the  peopled  spaces, 
And  felt  again  my  lordly  egoism,  one  face  distinct  among 

the  blur  of  faces. 

1913 


16 


TRANQUILLITY  stirred  by  a  sudden  spasm, 
Knives  of  rain  that  cut  the  silence, 
Storms  that  rattle  the  bones  of  the  forest, 
Calm  of  the  marble-terraced  night 
Charred  with  the  spattering  of  rockets. 

Drums  will  I  hear  and  battles  now, 
And  the  long  death  howl  of  wolves  by  night, 
Watching  the  moon  on  the  forest  tops, 
Walking  with  delicate  frightened  steps 
To  the  slaughter-house  of  a  red  sunrise. 

1918 


17 


I  COULD  explain 
The  complicated  lore  that  drags  the  soul 
From  what  shall  profit  him 
To  gild  damnation  with  his  choicest  gold. 
But  you 

Are  poring  over  precious  books  and  do  not  hear 
Our  plaintive,  frivolous  songs; 
For  we   in   stubborn  vanity  ascend 
On  ladders  insecure, 
Toward  the  tottering  balconies 
To  serenade  our  painted  paramours; 
Caught  by  the  lure  of  dangerous  pale  hands, 
Oblivion's  heavy  lids  on  sleepless  eyes 
That  cheat  between  unrest  and  false  repose. 
And  we  are  haunted 

By  spectral  Joy  once  murdered  in  a  rage, 
Now  taking  shape  of  Pleasure, 
Disguised  in  many  clothes  and  skilful  masks. 
I  could  disclose 

The  truth  that  hangs  between  our  lies 
And  jostles  sleep  to  semi-consciousness; 
Truth,  that  stings  like  nettles 
Our  frail  hands  dare  not  pluck 
From  out  our  garden's  terraced  indolence. 
We  are  not  happy, 

And  you  make  us  dumb  with  loving  hands 
Reproachful  on  our  lips. 
Nor  can  we  sob  our  sorrows  on  your  breast, 
For  we  have  bartered  diamonds  for  glass, 
Our  tears  for  smiles, 
Eternity  for  now. 

1917 


18 


I  FEEL  in  me  a  manifold  desire 
From  many  lands  and  times  and  clamouring  peoples, 
And  I  the  Queen 
Of  crowding  vagabonds, 
Ghosts  of  lost  years  in  seeming  fancy  dress, 
With  pathos  of  torn  laces 
And  broken  swords; 
Cut-throats  and  kings  and  poets 
Who  have  loved  me 
In  visions  wild,  not  knowing 
What  I  was. 
In  me  no  end 

Even  where  the  last  content 
Clasps  on  my  head  a  crown 
Of  shining  endurance — 
I  slip  from  all  my  robes 
Into  the  rags  of  a  tattered  romance; 
The  stars  crowd  at  the  window, 
Their  jealous  destiny 
Raps  at  the  door — 
They  bob  and  wink  and  leer, 
And  I  must  leave  the  lamplight  for  the  road 
To  keep  strange  company. 
Farewell  and  Hail  I 

19x7 


19 


SILENCE— 
Somewhere  on  earth 
There  is  a  purpose  that  I  miss  or  have  forgotten. 
The  trees  stand  bolt  upright 
Like  roofless  pillars  of  a  broken  temple. 
There  is  a  purpose  in  Heaven, 
But  for  me 
Nothing. 

1917 


20 


I  SHOULD  like  to  say  to  the  world: 
I  have  launched  my  soul  like  a  ship  upon  free  waters; 
Beautiful  she  stands  in  the  docks  with  proud  masts  cutting 

the  sky, 
Perfectly  poised,  her  white  sails  spreading  like  wings, 
Her  figurehead  a  woman  with  breasts  that  daunt  the  spray, 
Her  flag  a  flutter  of  coloured  exuberance. 
I  should  like  to  see  her  plunging  out  of  the  idle  harbour 
Where  the  sulky  tide  drifts  scum,  and  the  sailors  wrangle 

and  shout, 
In  a  thunder  of  churning  waves  ramping  before  her  like 

dappled  stallions, 
Blossoming  behind  her  a  field  of  etiolate  lilies.   .  .  . 

But  to  the  mimicking,  plotting,  miserly,  cynical, 

To  the  rabble  and  gabble  that  dance  and  kill  on  the  quay, 

I  can  only  say  that  my  soul  is  a  sleeping  gondola 

Lulled  by  a  jester's  mandolin,  till  night  is  atinkle  with  tunes 

And  lantern-lights,  along  the  indolent  backwaters. 

1915 


21 


YOU  pass  as  in  a  drugged  delirium 
Wrought  strange  upon  the  mind's  distraction; 
You  sing  a  blasphemous  Te  Deum 
To  harlot  virgins,  and  a  fraction 
Of  your  fulginous  colour  passes, 
Stains  my  spirit's  great  conception 
As  it  dips  into  your  glasses. 
I  that  am  the  sole  exception 
To  your  stillborn,  false  devices, 
I  that  know  you,  I  that  hate  you, 
I  that  drank  now  spit  your  vices 
Through  my  loathing  reinstate  you; 
Dive  once  more  into  the  stagnance, 
Kiss  your  cynic  lips  and  drink  you, 
Concentrate  your  cruel  fragrance, 
Steal  your  flowers  before  I  sink  you, 
Lift  with  hate  instead  of  praises, 
Show  you  honour  of  my  scorning, 
Garlanded  you  go  to  blazes 
With  my  rhymes  for  your  adorning  I 

1913 


22 


O  FACES  that  look  so  coldly  at  me, 
Colder  than  dawn  through  the  windows  of  festival, 
Colder  than  dawn  with  her  grey  nun's  face. 
You  blame  me,  you  curse  me  with  your  eyes, 
While  your  lips  are  filled  with  flattering  syllables, 
With  tinkling  bells  that  harass  my  calm, 
Disturb  my  silence  and  shatter  my  thoughts. 
Your  laughter  waltzes  like  musical  boxes, 
How  can  I  hear  the  triumphant  symphonies? 
The  scarlet  rhapsodies  and  beryl-cold  sonatas?  .  .  . 
Ah,  strangers,  ah,  vacant  tedious  faces, 
Bobbing  beneath  the  feathery  hats, 

You  have  stolen  the  wings  of  birds  for  your  garnishing, 
And  the  stars  and  the  dim  pale  petals  of  the  sea 
To  make  your  breasts  resplendent,  to  glitter  your  dress, — 
How  I  might  love  you  and  weep  for  you, 
Crowning  your  brows  with  a  wreath  of  songs 
If  you  could  understand  my  singing, 
If  you  could  understand  my  love! 
But  you  are  waltzing  with  your  marionettes 
And  marching  to  the  music  of  the  clock — 
I  cannpt  bear  you  to  watch  me 
With  those  cold  eyes  through  which  I  see, 
Emptiness  only  and  dust. 

1918 


23 


I  SEE  myself  in  many  different  dresses, 
In  many  moods,  and  many  different  places; 
All  gold  amid  the  grey  where  solemn  faces 
Are  silence  to  my  mirth — a  flame  that  blesses 
From  yellow  lamp  the  darkness  which  oppresses  . 
Or  mid  the  dancers  in  their  trivial  laces 
Aloof,  as  in  the  ring  a  lion  paces, 
Disdainful  of  their  slander  or  caresses. 
I  see  myself  the  child  of  many  races, 
Poisoners,  martyrs,  harlots  and  princesses; 
Within  my  soul  a  thousand  weary  traces 
Of  pain  and  joy  and  passionate  excesses — 
Eternal  beauty  that  our  brief  love  chases 
With  snatch  of  desperate  hands  and  dying  tresses. 

1917 


24 


THERE  are  songs  enough  of  love,  of  joy,  of  grief 
Roads  to  the  sunset,  alleys  to  the  moon; 
Poems  of  the  red  rose  and  the  golden  leaf, 
Fantastic  faery  and  gay  ballad  tune. 

The  long  road  unto  nothing  I  will  sing, 
Sing  on  one  note,  monotonous  and  dry, 

Of  sameness,  calmness  and  the  years  that  bring 
No  more  emotion  than  the  fear  to  die. 

Grey  house,  grey  house  and  after  that  grey  house, 
Another  house  as  grey  and  steep  and  still : 

An  old  cat  tired  of  playing  with  a  mouse, 
A  sick  child  tired  of  chasing  down  the  hill. 

Shuffle  and  hurry,  idle  feet,  and  slow, 

Grim  face  and  merry  face,  so  ugly  all ! 
Why  do  you  hurry?     Where  is  there  to  go? 

Why  are  you  shouting?    Who  is  there  to  call? 

Lovers  still  kissing,  feverish  to  drain 

Stale  juices  from  the  shrivelled  fruit  of  lust: 

A  black  umbrella  held  up  in  the  rain, 

The  raindrops  making  patterns  in  the  dust. 

If  this  distaste  I  hold  for  fools  is  such, 

Shall  I  not  spit  upon  myself  ;is  well? 
Do  I  not  eat  and  drink  and  smile  as  much? 

Do  I  not  fatten  also  in  this  hell? 

Sadness  and  joy — if  they  were  melted  up, 

Things  that  were  great—  upon  the  lues  of  time 

Drop  but  as  soup  in  the  accustomed  cup, 
Settle  in  stagnance,  trickle  into  grime. 

25 


Faith,  freedom,  art  that  fire  a  man  or  two 
And  set  him  like  a  pilgrim  on  his  way 

With  Beauty's  face  before  him — what  of  you, 
Priest,  Butcher,  Scholar,  King,  upon  that  day? 

The  dullard-masses  that  no  god  can  savel 

If  I  were  God,  to  rise  and  strike  you  down 

And  break  your  churches  in  an  angry  wave 
And  make  a  furious  bonfire  of  your  town ! 

God  in  a  coloured  globe,  alone  and  still, 
Embroidering  wonders  with  a  fearless  brain, 

On  loom  of  spaces  measureless,  to  fill 

The  empty  air  with  passion  and  with  pain. 

Emblazon  all  the  heavens  with  desire 

And  Wisdom  delved  for  in  the  depths  of  time- 
Thoughts  sculptured  mountainous,  and  fancy's  fire 

Caught  in  the  running  swiftness  of  a  rhyme. 

Passion  high-pedestalled,  pangs  turned  to  treasure, 
Perfected  and  undone  and  built  afresh 

With  concentrated  agony  and  Pleasure  .  .  . 
If  I  were  God,  and  not  a  weight  of  flesh  1 

1914 


26 


HOW  often,  when  the  thought  of  suicide 
With  ghostly  weapon  beckons  us  to  die, 
The  ghosts  of  many  foods  alluring  glide 
On  golden  dishes,  wine  in  purple  tide 
To  drown  our  whim.    Things  danced  before  the  eye 
Like  tasselled  grapes  to  Tantalus:  The  sly 
Blue  of  a  curling  trout,  the  battened  pride 
Of  ham  in  frills,  complacent  quails  that  lie 
Resigned  to  death  like  heroes — July  peas, 
Expectant  bottles  foaming  at  the  brink — 
White  bread,  and  honey  of  the  golden  bees — 
A  peach  with  velvet  coat,  some  prawns  in  pink, 
A  slice  of  beef  carved  deftly,  Stilton  cheese, 
And  cup  where  berries  float  and  bubbles  wink. 

1917 


27 


IT  is  still  something  to  have  cheated  God 
And  bored  the  Devil  with  so  easy  prey, 
And  in  the  midst  of  summer  woods  to  raise 
A  leafless  tree  whose  stark  limbs  mock  at  Heaven, 
Flaunting  an  iron  hatred  in  the  midst  of  hope — 
Yet  sometimes  in  the  loneliness  of  night 
My  buried  longings  blossom  on  the  boughs, 
My  wistful  longings  come  out  star  by  star, 
Till  the  great  sky  is  light  with  my  desire, 
And  on  the  winds  my  songs  are  galloping.   .  .   . 
Ah,  to  what  dismal  greyness  creeps  the  soul 
Too  weak,  too  tired,  to  struggle  from  the  slough! 
My  weapons  rust,  my  pen  is  in  the  dust, 
The  moulting  feathers  plucked  from  out  my  wings 
Lie  dangling  in  the  hats  I  stole  them  for. 
My  heart  is  floating  in  a  claret  cup, 
My  brain  is  toppling  drunken  at  the  brim, 
My  life  is  drowned  within  the  lurid  dregs. 
I  turn  and  fold  my  hands  in  a  last  appeal, 
What  heaven  shall  I  pray  to  and  for  what, 
Now  that  my  songs  to  penny  tunes  are  set, 
And  nothing  is  to  save  of  me  but  flesh? 

1913 


28 


WHAT  words  that  move  on  wings  in  a  long  drift 
Can  waft  this  silence  into  weary  ears, 
And  steal  into  the  veins  and  fingertips 
Of  restless  bodies,  like  magnificent  ships 
Proud  from  the  seas  that  calmly  sail  through  fears, 
Mean  streets,  and  miseries,  with  passage  swift. 
What  words   pricked  from  the  stars  and  shimmering  to* 

gether, 
Or  swept  like  little  winds  through  leaves  alert, 
Can  filter  through  the  chinks  of  bolted  doors 
Deaf  to  the  clamours  knocking  without  pause, 
Steeled  with  indifference  against  all  hurt, 
Deaf  to  the  cry  of  man,  and  rack  of  weather: 
To  sing  the  hubbub  of  this  glittering  night, 
Where  all  the  lamps  each  with  a  separate  soul 
Throb  to  the  ecstasies  of  dancing  life; 
And  Beauty,  gleaming  high  her  magic  knife 
Cuts  free  the  tethered  heart  from  long  control 
And  flings  it  like  a  ball  with  mad  delight 
Into  the  silver  lap  of  the  young  moon. 
What  needles  quick,  what  threads,  what  fingers  fine 
Can  broider  tapestries  as  rich  as  these, 
Stranger  than  dreams  and  drifting  melodies, 
Transparent  as  the  gods  we  half  divine, 
Frail  as  the  thoughts  that  dwindle  in  a  swoon 
Ghostly  before  begetting.     Tinged  with  pain 
That  glimmers  pale  on  hands  we  cannot  find, 
\nd  visioned  faces  that  our  dreams  create 
Born  in  the  land  forbidden  us  of  fate 
And  longed  for  all  our  lives  .    ,    .   What  words  can  bind 
Forever  Joy,  that  never  comes  again  ! 

1915 


29 


1  THINK  myself 
The  fool  of  tragedy  strutting  upon  the  stage 
Where  murder  creeps  and  whispers. 
The  jester  clad  in  piebald  tights 
Half  black,  half  golden,  with  no  company 
Save  bells  that  jingle, 
And  an  effigy, 

The  grinning  image  painted  like  myself 
Upon  a  stick.  .  .  . 

I  think  myself 

The  fool  of  comedy  mournfully  straying 

Amid  the  revellers, 

Loving  the  moon  and  my  own  shadow 

With  its  strange  solemn  gestures — 

Loving  the  painted  moon 

That  lets  me  play  with  shadows. 

I  am  the  jester  on  an  empty  stage 

Playing  a  pantomime 

To  spectres  in  the  stalls, 

Listening  at  last 

For  ghostly  mirth  and  phantom  hands  applauding, 

And  for  some  king  with  decadent  tired  fingers 

To  fling  a  white  gardenia  at  my  feet. 

19 1 8 


30 


THE  adored,  wild,  strange,  irresistible, 
How  they  fail  one  at  the  last! 
What  is  there  in  your  faces 
That  we  should  worship  with  our  souls? 
Most  lovable,  perfidious, 
Vague — 

Molesting  even  our  visions 
With  treacherous  pathos. 
O  vulgarity,  mediocrity,  stupidity, 
What  is  it  in  you  that  makes  us  lavish  our  love, 
Covering  your  meagre  bodies 

With  our  passionate  mantle,  dyed  with  blood  and  dreams? 
Life  and  its  grey  days,  and  time 
Are  a  thin  curtain  through  which  you  shadow, 
Or  a  dim  glass  through  which  you  peer. 
You  climb  in  at  the  windows  of  our  souls 
With  ladders  and  stratagems, 
You  mope  in  corners  with  reproachful  eyes. 
But  what  do  you  do  for  us 
Lute  players,  dancers,  deceivers, 
Other  than  lie  with  red  lips 
And  cajole  with  tears  of  beryl? 
People — 

Men  and  women  with  laughable,  tragic  faces 
Winking  at  love, 
Treading  our  songs  and  illusions 
Under  petulant  feet! 

1917 


3i 


A  ROSE 

WHAT  do  you  ask  of  me  with  your  beauty,  what  are  you 
urging 
Of  labour  and  painful  aspiring  to  flatter  your  perfection? 
What  secretness  of  love  with  terrible  blushes  surging 
Unseen,  have  found  in  you  at  last  their  passionate  reflection? 

What  dreams  that  lovers  knew,  as  sleep  with  subtle  magic 
Tore  off  the  rags  of  life  and  made  her  dance  with  body 

spangled, 
Drew  back  the  vacant  hours,  the  tedious  and  the  tragic, 
And    showed    the    glittering    souls    from    bodies    we    had 

mangled; — 

What  visions  made  you,  emblem  of  longing  and  love  that 

has  died  unrequited, 
And  all  lost  joys,  and  tears,  and  beauty  passionately  given, 
Winked  at  by  folly,  skewered  by  the  butcher,  danced  on  and 

slighted, 
That  now  spring  up  from  death,  showing  their  slayers  the 

colours  of  Heaven? 

You  have  burst  from  the  ground  with  your  joy,  you  are 

pining  and  bleeding, 
Your   scent  is  heavy   with   sorrowful  love;   oh,   memories 

clinging, 
What  do  you  ask  of  my  soul  with  such  fierceness  of  pleading, 
I  that  was  glad  to  forget  .  .  .  What  do  you  need  of  my 


singing? 


1916 


32 


LIKE  flocks  of  tired  birds  when  autumn  comes, 
My  spirit  flags  across  the  darkening  fields 
And  melts  into  the  drabness  of  the  sky 
And  falls  like  dust  upon  the  huddled  corn. 
But  many  wizened  faces  brown  and  sad 
Peer  from  the  bushes  as  I  wander  past, — 
They  tell  me  all  those  things  that  old  men  say 
As  youth  looks  up  through  tears  with  pallid  cheek. 
"When  you  are  grey  and  crooked  as  ourselves, 
When  you  have  bowed  before  all  other  gods, 
And  found  them  false,  then  shall  you  come  at  last 
To  that  dark  King  of  grief,  and  he  shall  bless 
Your  bread  with  tears,  and  manacle  your  hands, 
And  call  you  slave  and  lover."  .    .    . 
Shall  not  a  child  take  Pain  for  company 
And  share  her  loneliness  with  him? 
Does  not  a  youth  know  tears 
In  the  first  bitterness  of  broken  love? 
Is  Grief  so  proud  a  king  that  none  shall  come 
To  seek  him  save  the  blind,  the  halt,  the  lame?  .    .    . 
He  is  a  tramp,  a  beggar,  and  a  clown, 
He  sits  a  jester  at  the  feet  of  kings 
And  scurries  with  the  leaves  in  Autumn's  (rain. 
He  rides  the  wooden  horses  at  a  fair, 
And  dances  with  the  jiggers  on  the  stage. 
Led  by  the  violins  of  discontent 
That  whine  their  music  to  my  listening  soul, 
I  dance  with  him  the  dance  of  withered  leaves, 
We  dance  together  to  the  tunes  of  ram 
Played  on  one  note  upon  the  only  string. 

1913 


33 


OH,  just  beyond  the  curve  of  ideal  quest 
That  changes  as  a  sea  wave  to  the  wind, 
Beyond  the  cloud  that  folds  around  a  star, 
And  dawn,  that  stands  ajar  to  let  us  in, 
Lies  that  to  which  our  loves  and  dreams  have  gone, 
The  paradise  of  all  we  might  have  been, 
While  we  are  washed  back  downwards  in  the  dark 
Where  tides  recede,  to  dwindle  with  the  foam. 

1917 


34 


AH !  you,  from  the  small  high-walled  acre  of  your  lives, 
Your  windows  only  looking  upon  gardens, 
Only  perceiving  love  and  death  and  truth 
As  facts  that  come  to  pass, 
That  pass  and  leave  you  still 
Within  your  safe  small  prisons, 
Older,  duller, 

To  walk  and  talk  among  the  evergreens. 
You  have  never  known 
Delight  of  dying  slowly, 
Poisoned  with  raptures 

In  many  hues  from  the  slim-cut  decanters  of  death — 
The  tunes 

That  dishevel  and  smooth, 
Cajole  and  melancholize — 
The  dance 

Which  is  a  whirling  of  leaves 
In  their  last  scorn  of  sorrow 
Flung  upwards  by  the  wind 
Into  the  haggard  face  of  winter — 
Nor  felt  your  souls  go  blowing  like  balloons 
Tossed  by  impulsive  hands; 
Nor  slid  as  skaters  swiftly 
Over  the  crackling  crystals  of  perilous  ice, 
Buffeted  with  bouquets  and  blinded  with  confetti   .    .    . 
You  have  not  felt  the  abandon 
Of  light  love 
Dragged  by  the  hair  across  a  slippery  Boor.  .   .   . 

1916 


35 


MOUTH  of  the  dust  I  kiss,  corruption  absolute, 
Worm,  that  shall  come  at  last  to  be  my  paramour, 
Envenomed,  unseen  wanderer  who  alone  is  mute, 
Yet  greater  than  gods  or  heroes  that  have  gone  before. 

For  you  I  sheave  the  harvest  of  my  hair, 
For  you  the  whiteness  of  my  flesh,  my  passion's  valour, 
For  you  I  throw  upon  the  grey  screen  of  the  air 
My  prism-like  conceptions,  my  gigantic  colour. 

For  you  the  delicate  hands  that  fashion  to  make  great 
Clay,  and  white  paper,  plant  a  tongue  in  silence, 
For  you  the  battle-frenzy,  and  the  might  of  hate, 
Science  for  giving  wounds,  and  healing  science. 

For  you  the  heart's  wild  love,  beauty,  long  care, 
Virginity,  passionate  womanhood,  perfected  wholeness, 
For  you  the  unborn  child  that  I  prepare, 
You,  flabby,  boneless,  brainless,  senseless,  soulless  1 

I9I3 


36 


THE  curtains  are  drawn  as  though  it  still  were  night, 
A  slip  of  dawn  between  them  is   a   dangling  silver 
ribbon; 
And  all  about  the  room  is  quietness — Each  patient  chair 
Erect,  alert,  in  place.    A  letter  on  the  table  and  a  book. 
Lie  as  you  left  them,  now  bereft  of  purpose — 
Garish  a  little  in  the  room's  sedateness,  you 
Returning    dressed    so    frivolously    in    all    your    coloured 

clothes! 
How  grey  and  sober,  full  of  placid  wit 
The  furniture,  the  pictures  on  the  wall; 
How  steely  swift  the  light,  stabbing  you  to  the  heart 
As  you  stand  at  the  window,  bright  as  rushing  blood. 
Garish  your  hair,  your  shoes,  your  startling  chalky  face 
And  white,  white  gloves  .  .  . 
What  time  is  it?  .    .    .  Still  ticks  the  tireless  clock, 
With  face  grimacing  .    .    .  nearly  six  it  is.  .   .    . 
Yet  hurries  not  nor  lingers,  like  our  hearts, 
For  in  its  dial  eternity  is  housed — 
A  cock  should  crow  .   .  .  there  are  no  cocks  in  town  1 
But  a  water  cart  with  surly  noise  below 
Grates  unconcerned  along  the  disconsolate  street. 
How  cold  and  how  familiar  all  these  things, 
To  you  so  lonely  in  the  enormous  dawn 
Slowly  unfastening  that  vermilion  dress  .   .   . 


1916 


37 


BLACK  VELVET 

THE  darkness  of  the  trees  at  deep  midnight 
And  sombreness  of  shadows  in  the  lake; 
A  mountain  in  the  starlight  wide  awake 
Dreaming  to  Heaven  with  imperial  might 
Of  lifted  shoulders,  huge  against  the  bright 
Bespattered  jewelry  of  stars — the  ache 
Of  silence,  and  the  sobbing  tides  that  break 
From  music.     Slumbering  cities — candle  light 
Snuffed  in  the  flooding  darkness,  and  the  train 
Of  Queens  that  go  to  scaffold  for  a  sin — 
Or  splash  of  blackness  manifest  of  pain, 
Hamlet  among  his  court,  a  Harlequin 
Of  tragedies  .   .   .  Mysterious  .   .   .  And  again 
Venetian  masks  against  a  milky  skin. 

1917 


38 


NERVES 

THESE  curious  looms  where  we  have  spun  our  fancies, 
These  intricate  webs  where  our  desires  are  threaded, 
These  weird  trapezes  that  our  passion  frenzies 
Strange  acrobats  to  catch  them  dizzy  headed. 
These  tightening  strings  upon  our  spirit's  fiddles 
Tuneful  or  out  of  tune  where  music  hungers 
From  writhing  bow,  these  intertwining  riddles 
Mazes  and  labyrinths  and  storms  and  languors. 
These  colours  twinging  on  a  prism's  edges, 
These  speckled  patterns  of  fanatic  madness 
From  glittering  eyeballs,  these  unresting  dredges 
For  pearls  within  the  depths  of  sadness  and  of  gladness — 
O  tortuous  thoughts,  what  are  you  seeking  after 
As  flies  around  a  carcass  with  a  humming  dreary, 
Gibing  the  silent  dead  with  treacherous  laughter, 
Molesting  quietness  and  waking  up  the  weary! 
What  then,  what  then,  can  sleep  not  crush  you  to  forget- 
ting 
With  all  her  body's  beauty,  cannot  peace  submerge  you 
0  wrangling,  juggling,  jangling,  pirouetting — 
What  hope  can  drag  you  from  the  small  desires  that  urge 

you? 
You  have  lassoed  the  moon  and  trapped  the  sun's  bright 

lion, 
\nd  trodden  out  the  red  stars  into  ashes, 
Destroyed  night's  temple  and  broken  the  pillars  of  iron, 
And   striped   the    snowy   horses   of   the   clouds    with    zebra 

gashes    .    .    . 
^  on  have  debauched  the  world!     And  as  I  sit  here  wearv, 
Deafened  with  your  demands  and  torn  in  tatters, 
'I  he  world  seems  suddenly  most  passionless  and  dreary, 
A    poor  bewildered   clown — and  nothing  matters. 

[916 

39 


MY  pain  has  all  the  patience  of  a  nun 
Who  kneels  and  prays  for  Heaven  on  the  stone, 
In  some  chill  cellar  where  the  amens  moan, 
Ave  Maria,  the  long  penance  spun 
Forever.    And  the  tapers  one  by  one 
Stand  like  cold  angels  round  the  Virgin's  throne. 
My  soul  is  tired  from  kneeling  all  alone, 
Its  little  candles  yearning  to  the  sun. 

Long  have  I  dreamed  of  Paradise  and  seen 

Bright  mirages  of  glory  on  the  grey 

Of  sad  horizons;  I  have  kept  the  green 

Surprise  of  spring  through  winter  and  dismay, 

Tasting  within  the  bitter  dregs  of  spleen 

Drugs  that  bring  peace,  and  wine  that  maketh  gay. 

1917 


40 


THE  scandal-monger  after  all  is  right — 
The  old  and  cunning  voice  with  weary  repetition 
Is  justified  in  all  dull  words  and  warnings. 
I  see  at  last  how  you, 
Spendthrift  of  passion 
In  love's  bankruptcy, 

Borrow  new  beauty  from  each  passing  face — 
How  being  too  lavish  you  did  steal 
From  generous  hands — 

You  are  the  idol  builder  and  the  robber  of  temples, 
Praising  with  passionate  psalms 
The  thing  you  cannot  worship — 
And  yet  your  prayers  have  stirred 
Belief  in  us — 

We  see  beyond  the  false  and  weary  face 
Into  your  haggard  soul  and  trust  from  pity — 
We  hear  beyond  the  idle  music  of  your  voice, 
A  wisdom  taught  by  cruelty 
And  a  tired  scorn  of  treachery  and  guile — 
We  see  your  wounds  and  weep, 
You  meet  our  pity  with  a  traitor's  kiss — 
For,  you  are  schooled  in  suffering  and  schooled 
In  teaching  pain  to  others — 
And  all  that  mob  of  furious  accusation 
To  which  you  turn  the  check,  or  curse  so  well, 
Are  but  the  ghosts  of  bodies  you  have  murdered, 
That  drive  you  on  in  vengeance  to  fresh  crime. 

1917 


41 


WOODS  of  brown  gloom  sombring  with  the  hush   of 
death, 
Wind's  lassitude  that  sets  the  tired  leaves  shivering, 
Starved  yellow  leaves  sighing  beneath  the  feet,  a  breath 
Consumptive,  old,  and  fever-red  leaves  quivering, 
As  with  an  earthward  flutter  like  a  ghostly  butterfly 
Listless  they  perish,  wavering  and  hovering. 
Skeleton  branches  where  the  rooks  flap  wings  and  cry, 
Perched  upon  ribs  and  fingers;  and  the  white  mists  covering 
The  far-off  hills  and  bloodless  visage  of  the  sun. 
No  noise  save  the  meandering  dribble  of  a  rivulet, 
No  noise  save  of  the  slow  hours  dropping  one  by  one 
As  embers,  no  colour  save  Time's  ashen  coverlet.  .    .   . 
How  melancholy  here  the  gayest  tunes  would  sound 
From  shrill  carousers  riotous  and  merry  all, 
As  echoes  of  lost  joy  their  dancing  feet  upon  the  ground, 
As  funeral  bagpipes  at  a  burial. 
And  I  who  wander  passionless  and  forlorn, 
A  leaf-forsaken  tree  symbolic  of  dejection, 
In  rags  of  old  desires,  dispirited  and  torn, 
See  in  the  stagnant  glass  of  Time  my  soul's  reflection. 

1916 


42 


I 


FEEL  so  much  alone, 
And  yet  I  know  that  many  hopes  are  storming 
My  shut  heart; 

For  I  am  bolted  fast  in  my  own  house. 
I  pace  distracted  through  its  corridors 
To  the  music  of  Love's  knocking  hands 
Against  the  gate, 
Or  silence  when  they  sleep. 
I  cannot  find  the  key  to  let  them  in, 
I,  my  own  host  and  guest  and  ghost, 
Imprisoned  in  myself  1 

1917 


43 


THE  COMPLEX  LIFE 

I  KNOW  it  to  be  true  that  those  who  live 
As  do  the  grasses  and  the  lilies  of  the  field 
Receiving  joy  from  Heaven,  sweetly  yield 
Their  joy  to  Earth,  and  taking  Beauty,  give. 

But  we  are  gathered  for  the  looms  of  Fate 
That  Time  with  ever-turning  multiplying  wheels 
Spins  into  complex  patterns  and  conceals 
His  huge  invention  with  forms  intricate. 

Each  generation  blindly  fills  the  plan, 

A  sorry  muddle  or  an  inspiration  of  God 

With  many  processes  from  out  the  sod, 

The  Earth  and  Heaven  are  mingled  and  made  man. 

We  must  be  tired  and  sleepless,  gaily  sad, 
Frothing  like  waves  in  clamorous  confusion, 
A  chemistry  of  subtle  interfusion, 
Experiments  of  genius  that  the  ignorant  call  mad. 

We  spell  the  crimes  of  our  unruly  days, 
We  see  a  fabled  Arcady  in  our  mind, 
We  crave  perfection  that  we  may  not  find. 
Time  laughs  within  the  clock  and  Destiny  plays. 

You  peasants  and  you  hermits,  simple  livers! 
So  picturesquely  pure,  all  unconcerned 
While  we  give  up  our  bodies  to  be  burned, 
And  dredge  for  treasure  in  the  muddy  rivers. 

We  drink  and  die  and  sell  ourselves  for  power, 
We  hunt  with  treacherous  steps  and  stealthy  knife, 
We  make  a  gaudy  havoc  of  our  life 
And  live  a  thousand  ages  in  an  hour. 

44 


Our  loves  are  spoilt  by  introspective  guile, 
We  vivisect  our  souls  with  elaborate  tools, 
We  dance  in  couples  to  the  tune  of  fools, 
And  dream  of  harassed  continents  the  while. 

Subconscious  visions  hold  us  and  we  fashion 
Delirious  verses,  tortured  statues,  spasms  of  paint, 
Make  cryptic  perorations  of  complaint, 
Inverted  religion,  and  perverted  passion. 

But  since  we  are  children  of  this  age, 
In  curious  ways  discovering  salvation, 
I  will  not  quit  my  muddled  generation, 
But  ever  plead  for  Beauty  in  this  rage. 

Although  I  know  that  Nature's  bounty  yields 
Unto  simplicity  a  beautiful  content, 
Only  when  battle  breaks  me  and  my  strength  is  spent 
Will  I  give  back  my  body  to  the  fields. 

1917 


45 


SHALL  we  be  christened  poets,  children  of  God, 
For  blowing  sighs  into  the  listeners'  ears, 
For  tugging  at  the  moaning  bells  of  death, 
And  coming  as  the  autumn  grave-digger 
To  close  the  eyes  of  flowers,  and  shut  the  fingers 
Of  wind  upon  the  rushes, 
Of  music  upon  silence? 

Shall  we  be  given  wreathes  of  bay  and  laurel 
For  forcing  tragedy  into  a  rhyme 
As  a  gaunt  beggar  in  a  spangled  vest? 
The  poet  ever  wanders  after  Death, 
The  flunkey  on  a  funeral  chariot 
Pouring  the  wine  at  feasts  of  burial; 
And  all  the  roses  that  he  plucks  from  summer 
Are  carried  to  the  crypts  to  deck  a  corpse.  .   .   . 
How  shall  the  world  learn  how  to  laugh  again 
When  all  its  songs  have  only  learnt  to  weep? 

1919 


46 


WHEN  I  am  weary  at  the  antic  chance, 
The  hobby-horses  and  the  wooden  lance, 
The  hope  and  fear  in  jugglery,  and  see 
How  starved  the  juggler,  mean  and  miserly, 
And  life  a  laboured  trick — the  years  advance 
A  shrilling  chorus  in  affected  dance 
With  lust  of  many  eyes  that  watch  and  wink 
Fixed  on  them;  or  a  clown  in  feverish  pink 
Will  draw  gross  laughter  by  a  hideous  prance — 
Vulgarity  and  sin  and  souls  askance, 
Where  fiddles  squeal  and  all  the  follies  spin — 
Till,  when  the  stage  is  empty,  Harlequin 
Through  curtained  silence  trips  as  from  a  trance 
With  blushing  flowers  for  Columbine — Romance. 

1917 


47 


MOODS 

I 

I    CROUCHED  upon   cushions   and   wallowed  in  their 
somnolent  caresses, 
And — listening  with   dread   for  the   moment   of  my   own 

silence 
Rending  the  flimsy  lace  of  whisperings — 
My  gnome  dances  before  me 
Behind  a  fan  of  smoke, 
My  dwarf  squats  on  my  shoulders 
Tweeking  their  moulted  wings, 
My  ape  peers  in  the  mirror  of  my  face 
Mimicking  my  soul's  gaunt  gestures — 
My  wolf  bays  through  my  moonly  loneliness 
Blotching  the  night  with  howls — 
My  laughter  goes  whining  away  on  the  wind, 
Laughs  that  are  whipped  by  a  soul  too  sick  with  merriment, 
Too  satiate  with  humour's  emptiness!  .  .  . 

II 

Ah!  loveliness  with  little  pointed  feet 
Dancing  across  the  leer  of  ugliness, 
Skimming  like  a  gold  thread 
Through  a  necklace  of  vile  masks — ■ 
Lifting  with  lotus  fingers 
The  blue   arras   of  nightmare — 
Loveliness  like  a  delicate  silver  flute 
Pressed  to  a  negro's  lips — 

III 

Do  you  then  wish  for  all  those  griefs 
Whose  snarling  hands  you  kiss, 
Kneeling  in  adoration  to  a  dagger 

48 


As  saints  before  a  cross? 

You  who  have  tossed  all  flowers  away, 

Coveting  the  drenched  red  peonies  of  blood 

Their  javelin-petals  wet  with  slaughter, — 

Do  you  then  crave  your  own  blood's  offering, 

Your  own  breast's  pallor  pierced  with  knives  of  flame? 

In  your  ears  are  the  pattering  of  the  hunter's  feet, 

Softer  than  death,  and  omens  mouthed  by  winds  of  twilight, 

You  lean  across  the  precipice  of  time 

Calling  and  crying 

For  the  last  abyssmal  passion   of  self-slaughter — 

IV 

Waiting, 

Like  grey  cloud-giants  climbing  the  hills  of  Heaven 

Carrying  vast  burdens  over  the  crags  of  chaos — 

Waiting, 

Like  trees  that  hear  the  far-off  moan  of  winds, 

Like  listening  trees  that  hug  their  branches  round  them, 

Their  leaves  whispering  lividly  the  rumour  of  storms, 

Waiting  like  a  vast  arch  of  quietness 

Through  which  a  screaming  messenger  shall  dart — 

Like  a  dense  hood  of  silence 

Pierced  by  a  sword  of  music — 

Waiting,  like  the  deathly  stillness  of  a  pool 

Reflecting  the  diver  poised  before  he  plunges.   .  .  . 

1919 


49 


SMOKE 


NOW  is  the  evening  dipped  knee-deep  in  blood 
And  the  dun  hills  stand  fearful  in  their  places. 
Cunning  in  sin,  we  shuffle  down  the  streets 
With  burdens  of  vainglory  on  our  backs, 
Spinning  with  spider-hands  the  miser's  web 
Or  sitting  placid,  gay  and  fat  with  ease. 
But  out  beyond,  the  armies  of  the  world 
March  doomwards  to  the  rhythm  of  the  drum 
Under  the  thirsting  sun.     Death  holds  his  state : 

His  skeleton  hands  are  filled  with  scarlet  spoil : 
He  stands  on  flaming  ramparts,  waving  high 
The  ensign  of  decay.     All  his  bones  are  dressed 
With  livid  roses;  all  his  pillars  black 
Are  girt  in  ashen  poppies,  and  on  dust 
He  raises  up  his  awful  golden  throne. 

Ohl  your  fierce  shrieks  have  fainted  on  deaf  ears; 
Your  tears  have  flowed  on  feet  of  carven  stone; 
Your  blood  is  spilt  for  the  boiling-pot  of  God 
Where  good  and  evil  mix;  and  all  your  rage 
Is  but  a  thin  smoke  wafted  in  His  face. 

1914 


53 


BLOW  upon  blow  they  bruise  the  daylight  wan, 
Scar  upon  scar  they  rend  the  quiet  shore; 
They  ride  on  furious,  leaving  every  man 
Crushed  like  a  maggot  by  the  hoofs  of  war: 
Gods  that  grow  tired  of  paradisial  water 
And  fill  their  cups  with  steaming  wine  of  slaughter. 

I  fear  a  thing  more  terrible  than  death: 

The  glamour  of  the  battle  grips  us  yet — 

As  crowds  before  a  fire  that  hold  their  breath 

Watching  the  burning  houses,  and  forget 

All  they  will  lose,  but  marvel  to  behold 

Its  dazzling  strength,  the  glamour  of  its  gold. 

I  fear  the  time  when  slow  the  flame  expires, 
When  this  kaleidoscope  of  roaring  color 
Fades,  and  rage  faints;  and  of  the  funeral-fires 
That  shone  with  battle,  nothing  left  of  valour 
Save  chill  ignoble  ashes  for  despair 
To  strew  with  widowed  hands  upon  her  hair. 

Livid  and  damp  unfolds  the  winding-sheet, 
Hiding  the  mangled  body  of  the  Earth: 
The  slow  grey  aftermath,  the  limping  feet 
Of  days  that  shall  not  know  the  sound  of  mirth, 
But  pass  in  dry-eyed  patience,  with  no  trust 
Save  to  end  living  and  be  heaped  with  dust. 

That  stillness  that  must  follow  where  Death  trod, 
The  sullen  street,  the  empty  drinking-hall, 
The  tuneless  voices  cringing  praise  to  God, 
Deaf  gods,  that  did  not  heed  the  anguished  call, 
Now  to  be  soothed  with  humbleness  and  praise, 
With  fawning  kisses  for  the  hand  that  slays. 

54 


Across  the  world  from  out  the  fevered  ground 
Decay  from  every  pore  exhales  its  breath; 
A  cloak  of  penance  winding  close  around 
The  bright  desire  of  spring.    And  unto  Death, 
As  to  a  conquering  king,  we  yield  the  keys 
Of  Beauty's  gates  upon  our  bended  knees. 

The  maiden  loverless  shall  go  her  ways, 
And  child  unfathered  feed  on  crust  and  husk; 
The  sun  that  was  the  glory  of  our  days 
Shining  as  tinsel  till  the  moody  dusk 
Into  our  starving  outstretched  arms  shall  lay 
Her  silent  sleep,  the  only  boon  we  pray. 

1914 


55 


A  RAGGED  drummer  rides  along  the  street, 
And  at  his  coming 
The  silence  fills  with  tunes  and  rustling  feet 
And  voices  humming. 
He  rode  a  year  ago  from  far  away, 
On  charger  prancing, 

With  bright  new  buttons  and  with  ribbons  gay, 
And  banners  dancing. 
Oh,  he  was  fatter  than  the  bursting  drum 
He  bore  so  proudly, 
His  roaring  music  woke  the  silence  dumb 
To  thunder  loudly. 

And  by  his  side  the  old  men  and  the  young 
Had  followed  cheering 
Into  the  sunset  smiling  as  they  sung, 
Nor  thought  of  fearing. 
They  left  their  lovers  and  their  mothers'  lap, 
Their  homes  demolish, 
"For,  look,  I  have  a  ribbon  for  my  cap, 
A  sword  to  polish!" 
And  so  the  town  was  silent  once  again, 
Though  tunes  of  battle 
Beat  fearful  in  the  wind,  or  in  the  rain 
Ghost  drums  would  rattle. 
But  at  the  chuckling  dice  or  careful  loom, 
Or  candled  churches 

A  few  forgot  or  prayed  or  followed  doom 
With  drunken  lurches.  .   .   . 

Now  loom  and  bar  and  church  disgorge  the  throng, 
In  huddled  masses 

They  stand  aghast  to  hear  the  drummer's  song 
As  back  he  passes — 

Palsied  and  drear  and  bent  he  turns  alone 
In  rags  and  tatters, 
And  on  a  soundless  barrel  with  a  bone 
He  beats  and  batters. 
56 


"Where  march  your  feet  so  gaily,  careless  crowd, 

That  we  may  kiss  them? 

Where  sound  your  little  songs  that  rang  so  loud 

To  us  that  miss  them?" 

There  are  no  songs,  no  happy  marching  feet, 

No  favours  flying: 

The  drummer  passes  ...  on  the  quiet  street 

The  sun  is  dying. 

Sun  that  must  bleed  to  death  so  red  and  brave  1   . 

Have  done  with  weeping, 

But  put  your  ribbons  on  a  soldier's  grave 

As  he  lies  sleeping. 

1914 


57 


ZEPPELINS  MIDNIGHT 

SUDDENLY 
Shutting  our  lips  upon  a  jest 
As  we  are  sipping  thoughts  from  little  glasses, 
A  gun  bursts  thunder  and  the  echoing  streets 
Quiver  with  startled  terrors — 
How  swift  runs  fear:  quicksilver  that  is  free! 
Now  every  muscle  weakens,  every  pulse 
Is  set  at  gallop-pace  and  every  nerve 
Stretched  taut  with  horror  and  a  wild  revolt.  .   .  . 
How  sweetly  spins  the  world  to  noise  of  music, 
How  sweet  to  live  life's  arrogant  adventure! 
Live  in  a  vain  world  wracked  with  a  thousand  pangs, 
Limp  in  a  dull  street  housed  with  crumbling  dreams, 
To  breathe  and  eat  and  sleep  and  love  and  sigh 
A  little  longer,  oh  a  little  year! 
Forgotten  prayers  rise  up  in  resurrection, 
And  resolutions  of  new  wondrous  lives 
Choke  up  our  hearts  and  fling  us  to  our  knees.  .   .  . 
Worms  creep  in  dreadful  hunger  from  the  ground, 
The  lurid  silent  people  loved  by  death, 
And  peer  into  our  eyes  with  sly  forebodings 
To  drag  our  body's  glory  from  the  light. 
Though  all  the  world  should  fall  into  their  cells 
And  lie  within  their  larders  shelf  on  shelf — 
Yet  will  I  toss  the  sheets  of  dust  away, 
Yet  will  I  be  the  mistress  of  the  sun ! 


Look  how  they  struggle  in  a  mist  of  fire, 

Those  hunchbacked  chimneys  and  distorted  domes — s 

Now  gloat  on  Hell,  the  colour  seems  to  roar, 

An  army  fierce  upon  its  own  destruction, 

A  famished  monster  tearing  in  its  claws 

Gigantic  foods  to  glut  its  lean  desire 

58 


I    A.  M. 


Digesting  all  the  world!  .   .   . 

Look  at  the  eager  people  open-mouthed 

That  stand  as  foolish  rabbits  hypnotised 

By  the  uncoiling  rhythm  of  a  snake, 

Their  earth  adoring  senses  caught  awhile 

In  the  red  whirlwind  of  ascending  wings; 

Their  spirits  straining  upward  upon  strings 

Like  kites  and  air  balloons,  but  more  grotesque, 

Lacking  the  ephemeral  beauty  of  a  toy — 

Yet  for  an  hour 

Dyed  with  the  colour  that  their  drabness  fears 

They  kiss  the  feet  of  beauty  as  she  passes 

Starwards,  tremendous  in  a  coat  of  fire. 


The  dawn  seems  drained  of  blood  so  colourless — 

Slowly  the  river  moves  as  though  in  sleep 

While  silent  barges 

Slide  from  the  mist  like  dreams; 

The  intricate  patterns  of  the  scaffolding 

Are  drawn  against  the  sky 

More  delicate  than  lace. 

All  the  shimmering  lights 

Have  shrunk  away  from  morning 

As  a  blue  peacock  sheaves  his  starry  tail.  .  .  . 

I  am  alone,  most  utterly  alone, 

More  lonely  than  the  last  man  in  the  world 

Straying  amid  the  dust  of  vanished  lives. 

More  lonely  than  a  spirit  stolen  from  heaven 

Who  stands  beside  that  nebulous  cold  river 

Dividing  sleep  from  death, 

Eternity  from  time.   .   .   . 

Nothing  disturbs  the  white  peace  of  the  dawn, 

She  brings  no  feverous  memories  of  night 

And  sheds  no  tears. 

59 


3  A.M. 


Only  two  hours  ago 

Fire  walked  in  crimson  armour  through  the  city 

Piercing  the  night's  black  tent  with  glittering  javelins, 

While  shrieks  and  whispered  omens  flew  like  bats 

Among  the  silver  foliage  of  the  stars.  .  .  . 

But  rage  has  left  no  furrow  in  the  sky, 

No  wake  of  sparks  across  the  placid  water.  .   .   . 

This  is  the  ominous  and  sacred  hour 

When  priest-like  the  world  kneels 

Bowed  low  toward  the  empty  throne  of  day — 

Soon  will  the  herald  trumpet-blast  be  heard 

And  the  flamingo  messengers  will  come 

Flocking  from  out  the  burnished  cage  of  sunrise.  .  .  , 

This  is  the  hour  of  nothing, 

Colourless  and  chill 

Oblivion's  hands  are  folded  on  the  world, 

As  sits  an  idol  holding  in  his  fingers 

A  scentless  lotus  carven  out  of  stone. 


4  A.  M. 


Leaving  the  dun  river  with  hurried  tapping  feet 

And  up  the  long  uncomfortable  street 

With  eyes  uninterested  yet  forced  to  see  and  read 

The  dingy  notices  once  sharp  and  bright  with  greed, 

Now  drear  with  want,  that  swear  the  Queen's  Hotel 

And  Brown's  Hotel  and  King's  are  doing  well — 

A  soldier  and  a  beggar  mock  me  as  I  go, 

The  light  steals  after  me,  emerging  slow 

And  pale  from  the  dim  alleys  shadow-crouched. 

I  hurried  by  the  drunkard  as  he  slouched 

From  lamp-post  unto  lamp-post.  .   .   .  Then  I  saw 

Caught  in  the  mirror  of  a  tailor's  door 

My  own  reflection  as  I  hurried  past, 

My  flaring  colours  and  my  face  aghast — 

The  scarlet  tassel  of  my  hat  that  hung 

60 


Limp  as  a  spent  flame,  and  my  skirt  that  clung 

About  my  knees  and  fluttered  at  the  back: 

An  injured  moth,  with  sulphur  stripes  and  black, 

My  bag  flamboyant  as  a  pillar-box; 

My  frayed  gilt  fringe  of  hair  and  tarnished  locks. 

Jagged  and  crude  and  swift  I  seemed  to  pass 

Painted  too  brightly  on  that  temperate  glass. 

.  .  .  An  omnibus  from  sudden  corner  reels: 

Silence  lies  mangled  underneath  the  wheels. 

1915 


61 


O  FLATTERY,  imposture,  battle  show, 
What    banners  have    you  woven    from  the  parted 
raiment, 
What  crimes  from  Calvary,  what  endless  flow 
Of  blood  from  blood,  revenge,  exacted  payment! 

How  have  you  turned  the  simple  truth  to  lies 
Made  capital  from  creeds  and  missed  their  beauty, 
Exalted  vainly  with  self-pitying  sighs 
The  wrongs  enacted  in  the  name  of  duty. 

And  ever  quoting  God  for  your  excuse, 
Bribing  divinity  to  cloak  your  shame, 
You  train  the  spirit  for  material  use, 
You  sacrifice  men's  hearts  to  feed  your  flame. 

When  shall  the  world  be  rid  of  these  bald  priests, 

Pig-snouted  with  their  gilded  wolfish  ears, 

The  scarlet  cardinals  of  drunken  feasts 

Whose  hands  are  washed  in  blood,  whose  feet  in  tears? 

1916 


62 


WHAT  will  happen  to  the  beggar,  and  the  sinner,  and 
the  sad, 
And  the  drunk  that  drinks  for  sorrow,  and  the  maimed,  and 

mad; 
What  will  happen  to  the  starving,  and  the  rebel  run  from 

drilling, 
Cowardly,   afraid   of  fighting,   and  the  child  who  stole  a 

shilling? 
They  shall  go  to  prison  black 
With  a  striped  shirt  on  the  back, 
Feast  on  bread  and  water  there 
In  a  cell,  without  a  care. 
They  shall  learn  at  least  their  duty, 
Never  tempted  more  of  beauty — 
They  shall  walk  in  rows  and  praise  the  Lord, 
And  one  or  two  shall  hang  upon  a  cord — 
And  two  or  three  shall  die  of  grief  alone — 
(And  this  is  well,  for  sinners  should  atone,) 
And  five  or  six  shall  curse  the  God  that  made  them, 
(And  this  is  wicked,  for  the  priests  forbade  them,) 
And  those  that  grew  from  dust  shall  go  to  dust 
Downtrodden.     Saith  the  preacher: — "God  is  just." 

r9i7 


63 


IF  I  were  what  I  would  be,  and  could  break 
The  buttressed  fortress  of  stupidity 
Where  laws  are  sentinels,  and  lies  the  masonry, 
Surrounded  with  inertia,  weedy  lake, 
Where  centuries  of  mud  lie  curdled,  and  the  fake 
Grandeur  of  cardboard  turrets,  solemn  puppetry — 
The  gods  are  blinking  at  us  sleepily, 
Tired  of  our  games,  the  muddles  that  we  make, 
The  bloodshed,  idol  worshipping,  the  chess 
Of  king,  queen,  castle,  bishop,  knight  and  pawn — 
The  rigid  squares  of  black  and  white,  they  dress 
With  their  perpetual  challenge — faded,  worn, 
Are  all  the  creeds  and  praises  you  profess 
To  weary  gods  that  stretch  themselves  and  yawn. 

1917 


64 


HOLY  RUSSIA 

THE  ghostly  blood  of  thee  is  in  my  veins, 
Back  through  the  centuries  of  death  and  birth, 
Sometime  I  thrilled  with  thy  gigantic  pains, 
My  kin  lie  somewhere  covered  with  thine  earth. 

And  ever  as  in  dreams  I  seem  to  see 
Those  streets  and  people  with  their  colours  cold; 
Thou  hast  the  singing  hungers  of  the  sea, 
The  tides  of  restless  passion  ages  old. 

I  know  thy  humours  and  their  contradiction, 
I  know  thy  fevers  and  hallucinations, 
I  see  beneath  the  painted  mask  of  fiction 
Thy  face  of  fierce  and  weary  exaltations. 

And  art  thou  come  to  gaze  with  wakened  eyes 
Into  the  sick  world's  travail  and  her  grief, 
Dost  thou  from  thy  long  battling  surmise 
The  end  of  battle  and  the  world's  relief? 

While  we  are  creeping  in  our  crooked  ways 
Along  the  crumbling  roads  of  worn-out  creeds 
Where  Ignorance  walks  royally  through  days 
That  smell  of  death,  decay  and  bloody  deeds. 

While  we  still  cry  to  God  for  strength  to  kill, 

Reminding  1  lim  that  Britain  rules  the  waves, 

And  grind  young  bones  for  the  commercial  mill, 
And  build  munition  works  among  the  graves. 

Still  crying  "Honour,"  "Country"  and  "The  Flag," 
"  I  he  last  heroic  fight  in  Freedom's  name  I" 
Though  Kings  make  mouths  at  Kings,  and  Prelates  brag- 
I  hey  boast  of  murder  and  they  reek  of  shame!    .   .   . 

65 


Thou  that  hast  touched  the  mystic  wounds  of  God, 
And  strewn  with  broken  hearts  the  Virgin's  feet, 
Feeling  beneath  the  burden  and  the  rod 
His  justice  and  Her  pity  in  the  street. 

Justice  and  Pity,  crying  in  the  wind — 
We  only  hear  the  guns  that  never  cease, 
The  flapping  of  our  flags  has  made  us  blind! 
We  may  not  see  the  sacred  gods  of  peace. 

But  thou  dost  build  fanatic  temples  for  them, 
And  thou  dost  pave  the  road  with  sanity, 
And  all  the  train  of  bitter  ghosts  adore  them, 
Who  died  to  puff  a  monarch's  vanity. 

I  hear  thy  orchestras  of  holy  cheers, 

The  drum  that  life  has  snatched  away  from  death, 

And  all  the  sighing  rhythm  of  thy  tears, 

And  the  brave  laughter  of  thy  trumpet-breath. 

Peace  !     But  a  cynic  whispered  in  my  ear 
How  kings  like  worms  still  wrangled  for  a  crown 
That  lay  amid  the  dust — and  I  could  hear 
A  hum  of  money-changing  in  the  town. 

I  feared  that  afterwards,  when  all  is  won, 
We  shall  forget  the  meaning  of  thy  deed — 
And  man  will  creep  as  he  has  always  done 
Along  the  little  gutters  of  his  greed. 

1917 


66 


HOW  deeply  nurtured  is  your  foolishness, 
Calling  destruction  great  and  slaughter  brave, 
Making  large  triumph  of  a  little  grave, 
Imperial  purple  of  a  mourning  dress, 
The  gun  an  emblem  of  your  godliness — 
A  fluttering  ribbon  or  a  banner's  wave, 
A  medal  or  a  bayonet,  or  rave 
Of  singing,  marching  in  the  forward  press 
Of  hatred  to  the  banging  of  a  band; 
Your  country's  honour  and  the  world's  release. 
Are  they  not  strong  in  courage  who  withstand 
The  armies  of  your  folly  and  shall  cease 
To  tarnish  with  spilt  life  their  motherland? 
Cowards — or  martyrs — crucified  for  peace. 

1917 


67 


OF  all  who  died  in  silence  far  away 
Where  sympathy  was  busy  with  other  things, 
Busy  with  worlds,  inventing  how  to  slay, 
Troubled  with   rights   and   wrongs   and  governments   and 
kings. 

The  little  dead  who  knew  so  large  a  love, 

Whose  lives  were  sweet  unto  themselves  a  shepherding 

Of  hopes,  ambitions,  wonders  in  a  drove 

Over  the  hills  of  time,  that  now  are  graves  for  burying. 

Of  all  the  tenderness  that  flowed  to  them, 

A  milky  way  streaming  from  out  their  mother's  breast, 

Stars  were  they  to  her  night,  and  she  the  stem 

From  which  they  flowered — now  barren  and  left  unblessed. 

Of  all  the  sparkling  kisses  that  they  gave 
Spangling  a  secret  radiance  on  adoring  hands, 
Now  stifled  in  the  darkness  of  a  grave 
With  kiss  of  loneliness  and  death's  embracing  bands. 

No  more! — And  we,  the  mourners,  dare  not  wear 
The  black  that  folds  our  hearts  in  secrecy  of  pain, 
But  must  don  purple  and  bright  standards  bear, 
Vermilion  of  our  honour,  a  bloody  train. 

We  dare  not  weep  who  must  be  brave  in  battle — 
"Another  death — another  day — another  inch  of  land — 
The  dead  are  cheering  and  the  ghost  drums  rattle"  .    .    . 
The  dead  are  deaf  and  dumb  and  cannot  understand.   .   .   . 

Of  all  who  died  in  darkness  far  away 

Nothing  is  left  of  them  but  love,  who  triumphs  now, 

His.  arms  held  crosswise  to  the  budding  day, 

The  passion-red  roses  clustering  his  brow. 

1917 

68 


AND  afterwards,  when  honour  has  made  good, 
And  all  you  think  you  fight  for  shall  take  place, 
A  late  rejoicing  to  a  crippled  race; 
The  bulldog's  teeth  relax  and  snap  for  food, 
The  eagles  fly  to  their  forsaken  brood, 
Within  the  ravaged  nest.     When  no  disgrace 
Shall  spread  a  blush  across  the  haggard  face 
Of  anxious  Pride,  already  flushed  with  blood. 

In  victory  will  you  have  conquered  Hate, 
And  stuck  old  Folly  with  a  bayonet 
And  battered  down  the  hideous  prison  gate? 
Or  will  the  fatted  gods  be  gloried  yet, 
Glutted  with  gold  and  dust  and  empty  state, 
The  incense  of  our  anguish  and  our  sweat? 

1917 


69 


PITY  the  slain  that  laid  away  their  lives, 
Pity  the  prisoners  mangled  with  gyves, 
Thin  little  children  and  widowed  wives, 
And  the  broken  soldier  who  survives. 

Pity  the  woman  whose  body  was  sold 
For  a  little  bread  or  a  little  gold, 
And  a  little  fire  to  keep  out  the  cold, 
So  tired,  and  fearful  of  growing  old. 

Pity  the  people  in  the  grey  street 
Before  the  dawn  trooping  with  listless  feet 
Down  to  their  work  in  the  dust  and  the  heat, 
For  a  little  bread  and  a  little  meat. 

Pity  the  criminal  sentenced  to  die, 

Loving  life  so,  with  the  world  in  his  eye, 

In  his  ears  and  his  heart,  with  the  passionate  cry 

Of  love  that  will  call  when  he  may  not  reply. 

Pity  them  all,  the  imperative  faces 
That  peer  through  the  dark  where  we  sleep  in  our  laces, 
Where  we  skulk  among  cushions  in  opulent  places, 
With  indolent  postures  and  frivolous  graces. 

Eyes  that  prick  the  darkness,  fingers  thin 
Tearing  at  hypocrisy,  and  Sin 
That  batters  the  door  and  staggers  in.   .   .  . 
The  streets  surround  with  clamour  and  din, 

Drowning  our  flutes,  till  the  cries  of  the  city 
Flurry  us,  flutter  us,  force  us  to  pity, 
Force  us  to  sigh  and  arrange  a  committee, 
Tea-party  charity  danced  to  a  ditty.  .    .    . 
70 


The  scarlet  ribbons  flutter  and  wave, 
A  rebel  flag  on  a  rebel  grave, 
But  to  us  the  strong  alone  are  brave, 
And  only  the  rich  are  worthy  to  save! 

Yet  who  shall  blame  us,  plaited  and  curled, 
Where  silk  banners  fly  and  the  red  flags  are  furled, 
Flags  that  blow  where  the  dead  are  hurled, 
Tattered  and  dripping  with  blood  of  the  world! 

1918 


7i 


FLAME 


YOU  have  understood  so  little  of  me,  and  my  adoration 
That  shone  upon  my  forehead,  like  a  crown  of  curious 
stones, 
You  turned  into  a  cap  and  bells  for  Folly's  coronation 
And  made   a   foolish  tinkling  from  my  laughter  and  my 
moans. 

You  have  led  me  through  the  market  like  an  ass  upon  the 

halter, 
You  have  fed  me  upon  thistles;  I  was  driven  by  the  crowd; 
But  my  faith  in  what  I  am,  my  conceit,  you  cannot  alter; 
I  was  proud  in  pomp  and  purple,  as  a  clown  I  leave  you 

proud! 

A  greater  pride  than  sits  upon  a  throne  for  mere  adorning, 

A  fiercer  strength  than  in  the  gods  of  wood  that  cannot 
bow; 

I  tore  my  purple  into  rags  and  knelt  to  bear  your  scorn- 
ing, 

And  I  am  rebel  leader  to  a  band  of  beggars  now. 

In  the  twilight  of  my  love  I   stand  and  strew  the  bitter 

ashes; 
They  are  blown  into  my  eyes  again,  the  fires  that  shone  for 

you ; 
In  the  blushing  of  the  sunset  their  ghostly  fervour  flashes 
As  they  sink  for  everlasting  in  the  darkness  and  the  dew. 

Your   heart   is    as    a    moonstone   hieroglyphcd   with    secret 

letters; 
You  have  never  read  my  passion,  as  I  never  learnt  their 

sign, 
But  I  praise  your  haunting  beauty  and  I  bear  the  bruise  of 

fetters 
And  I   reel   from  your  remembrance  as  I  spill  the  ancient 

wine. 

75 


All  those  women  I  have  envied  with  their  pink  and  foolish 

faces, 
Moths  that  have  out-distanced  me  in  circling  round  your 

head, 
For  the  strangeness  of  your  kisses  and  the  curse  of  your 

embraces 
And  the  frenzy  of  pursuing  where  your  despot  feet  have  led. 

I  will  shout,  and  tear  the  darkness;  I  will  snuff  the  candles 
sacred 

With  the  rage  of  my  abasement,  with  the  blast  of  my  fare- 
well; 

I  will  smile  with  cynic  softness,  but  my  tears  are  dropping 
acrid 

And  sizzling  in  a  gutter  down  the  white-hot  streets  of  Hell  1 

1914 


76 


LULLED  are  the  dazzling  colours  of  the  day, 
And  mild  the  heavens,  burnt  out  like  an  ash. 
Hungry  and  strange  along  the  shadowed  dusk 
Walks  Melancholy,  and  with  bitter  mouth 
Sucks  the  last  juices  from  the  sun's  ripe  fruit. 
Now  can  I  sing  the  sickly  lines  of  love 
And  of  love's  failure,  spell  my  sorrows  out 
In  the  sad  spaces  of  the  gloaming  night, 
And  stooping,  huddled,  hide  me  in  the  dark. 
My  words  were  fireless  in  the  flaming  sun, 
And  all  the  throats  of  flowers  from  their  content 
Puffed  back  my  pinings  proudly  in  my  face 
And  bade  me  give  them  tunes  to  make  them  dance. 
Lean,  hungry,  like  my  love  the  moon  looks  down 
From  the  white  solitudes  of  Heaven.     All  aghast 
And  sterile  as  the  arms  of  my  desire 
She  flings  her  light  despairing  on  the  sky. 
The  night  is  strange  and  still,  for  dropping  tears, 
Or  burying  hatred  in  a  deep-dug  grave. 

1914 


77 


WASHED  at  my  feet  by  the  curded  foam  of  sluggish 
waves, 
As  the  rain  splinters  and  the  mud  gleams  with  malicious 

HSht' 
Like  a  frail  shell,  million  tinged  and  quaintly  wrought 

The  thought  of  you,  which  held  against  mine  ear 

Hums  all  the  echoed  melodies  of  your  soul; 

The  sigh  of  wearied  life,  the  ebbing  sweet  of  love, 

The  little  tunes  of  wine  mixed  with  the  chants  of  death, 

The  following  of  beauty's  fugitive  limbs 

Whose  classic  feet,  and  rapturous  pale  breast 

Gleam  on  the  clouds  and  foam, 

Call  to  her  lovers. — 

Thus  standing  in  the  blasting  of  the  wind, 

And  numb  with  ceaseless  drip  of  moments  from  the  cloud 

Of  lowering  hours,  I  toy  with  this  strange  relic  of  the  sea, 

Turned  with  such  perfectness  from  her  tumultuous  wheels, 

Thoughts  of  you  million  tinged  and  quaintly  wrought. 

1916 


78 


MY  poems  cannot  laugh.     They  are  the  voice 
Of  birds  that  mourn  and  cry  above  the  sea, 
And  this  wild  joy  my  love  has  brought  to  me 
Lies  dumb  and  knows  not  how  it  shall  rejoice. 

I  am  most  weary  of  the  petulant  songs  I  sing, 
Most  tired  of  tunes  that  only  learn  to  weep, 
And  long  to  turn  my  dreams  from  their  pale  sleep 
Into  a  gentle  minstrelsy  with  harp  of  silver  string; 

To  fashion  for  my  love  one  perfect  verse 
Symmetrically  threaded  by  beauty  word  on  word, 
Flowing  and  flashing  like  the  luted  laughter  of  a  bird 
To  bless  the  soul  with  music  which  I  ravished  with  a  curse. 

But  as  a  coward  in  the  general  gloom 
I  mimic  fortune  with  my  tunes  of  ill, 
Nor  pipe  despite  her  wistful  mirth  and  trill 
Of  love  that  moves  with  music  into  Doom; 

Of  love  that  thrills  with  joy  the  graveyard  cold, 
And  like  a  gay  canary  in  a  cage 
Mocks  at  his  prison,  and  with  flippant  rage 
Flaunts  his  bright  wing  to  fill  the  gloom  with  gold. 

1 9 1 6 


79 


ON  the  hill  there  is  a  tavern,  long-loved, well-remembered, 
Where  all  the  sleepy  afternoon  the  little  tables  dream, 

And  the  cool  green  bottles  ranged,  laugh  and  gleam  with 
golden  highlights, 

And  the  waiters  wrangle,  and  the  flies,  with  murmurs 
merged  and  mixed. 

We  will  go  there,  you  and  I,  to  wake  the  nodding  content- 
ment, 

And  toast  our  fancies  reverently  with  red  wine  and  with 
white  wine, 

And  with  eyes  mesmerised  to  the  horizon  gazing, 

Dream  our  iridescent  dreams  and  sigh  our  shadowy  sighs. 

1916 


80 


OH  canst  thou  not  hear  in  my  heart  all  its  whispering  fears 
Whose  wind-like  voices 
Flutter  the  leaves  of  my  hope  and  bow  them  with  tears 
While  the  body  rejoices. 

Till  all  the  pomp  and  beauty  of  day,  the  Cardinal  Sun 
Trailing  his  scarlet  vesture 

Leaves  after  light  the  pale  hills  sullen  and  dun, 
Turns  with  a  gesture 

Colour  and  glory  to  smoke  that  is  deathly  and  grey. 
I  follow  the  shadows  of  sorrow 

That  press  so  close  to  the  dancing  heels  of  the  day 
And  darken  the  morrow. 

The  world  turns  pale  and  cold,  for  I  seem  to  see 
Beyond  its  golden  visor 

The  leering  skull  that  derides  at  our  lives  and  me 
Being  older  than  life  and  wiser.   .    .    . 
I  hear  the  cry  of  the  world  that  writhes  to  the  lash  of  the 

whip 
Beyond  the  sound  of  the  treetops  singing 
To  the  wind's  persuasive  violins  and  bells  of  dews  that  drip, 
Or  rush  of  feathers  winging.  .    .    . 
Dost  thou  fear  death  as  I?    Ah  no,  but  thy  lips  are  against 

m>  cheek 
Murmuring  tenderly 
The  perfumed  lies  stolen  from  spring  that  wistfully  through 

the  bleak 
Windows  of  frost  so  slenderly 
Steals  her  little  ghost's  flute.     Thou  tellest  of  things  that 

might  be 
If  life  were  as  kind  as  a  lover, 

If  we  were  beloved  of  the  world  and  the  world  of  we. 
I  by  white  words  hover 

Dove-like  ill  rose  leaf  evenings  over  the  nest 
Silvering  heaven 

With  rustle  of  lovers  that  nestle  together  for  rest. 
If  I  could  have  given 
81 


My  tired  lips  to  kisses  and  my  body  to  sleep  and  to  thee, 
Ah  then  and  then  only 

The  dust  were  as  gentleness  mingling  thy  beauty  with  me 
And  death  were  not  lonely. 

1916 


82 


AS  in  the  silence  the  clear  moonlight  drips 
Among  the  fields  that  love  her  drowsily, 
These  passionate  moments  trickle  on  through  time, 
From  soul  to  languorous  soul. 
Like  mad  musicians  upon  fretted  harps, 
The  senses  play  upon  the  poignant  nerves, — 
And  colours  clothe  our  mood 
As  smoke  against  the  light,  as  shimmering  prisms 
Irised  with  pallors  of  an  opal's  heart 
In  which  the  glittered  pattern  of  desire 
Smoulders  and  changes.   .    .    . 
O  love,  thou  nightingale-throated  singer, 
Thread  on  thy  jewelled  chords  from  start  to  star 
And  keep  thy  silver  delicate  delight 
Out  of  the  flush  and  lustre  that  makes  mad. 
Let  thy  fairy  feet 

Go  tripping  down  a  scarcely  scented  path, 
Between  an  avenue  of  breathless  flowers. 
The  hours  glide  by  as  swans  across  a  lake, 
Across  the  luminous  waters  of  desire, 
And  beat  as  wings  the  rustle  of  soft  words, 
As  love  bends  down, 
Breathing  his  adoration  on  a  fainting  mouth. 

1917 


83 


I  CAN  but  give  thee  unsubstantial  things 
Wrapt  as  in  rose-leaves  between  thought  and  thought, 
No  gems  or  garments  marvellously  wrought 
On  ivory  spools  with  rare  embroiderings. 
Nor  for  thy  fingers  precious,  fabled  rings 
That  cardinals  have  worn,  and  queens  have  bought 
With  blood  and  beauty.     I  have  only  sought 
A  song  that  hovers  on  illusive  wings. 

Accept  from  me  a  dream  that  hath  no  art, 
I  give  my  empty  hands  for  thee  to  hold, 
Take  thou  the  gift  of  silence  for  my  part, 
With  all  the  deeper  things  I  have  not  told. 
Yet  if  thou  canst,  decipher  in  my  heart 
Its  passions  writ  in  hieroglyphs  of  gold, 

1917 


84 


I 

I  HAVE  no  other  friend  but  thee, 
But  while  I  tell  thee  all  my  thought 
Thine  ears  are  buzzing  with  gossip  of  dreams, 
Soothsayings  and  sighs,  and  little  things — 
How  canst  thou  listen  to  me? 

II 

Perchance  I  roamed  under  the  old  moon  too  long, 

And  when  my  cheek  grew  pale 

I  laid  it  against  thine  to  feel  the  blood  beat  back 

Responsive  in  the  double  rose  of  joy — 

But  I  feel  thee  shifting  away  into  loneliness 

Where  the  ghost  moon  glides  between  us.  .    .   . 

Ill 

When  at  a  masquerade 

I  meet  thee  in  the  shrill  indifferent  throng, 

Our  faces  painted  each  in  some  disguise 

Of  varnished  revelry; 

I  whisper  in  thine  ear 

Fables,  and  flatteries,  and  inconsequent  tales, 

Trivial  as  the  dust  that  whirls  about  our  feet, 

And  shower  the  multicoloured  streamers  high 

Where  Folly  is  king  of  midnight — 

Suddenly  dost  thou  snatch  thy  mask  aside, 

And  thy  still  face  looks  out, 

Weary  and  overwise 

Where  the  mad  pretence  avails  not. 

H 

Long  ago   we   walked   together  in   a  garden; 

It  was  evening  and  the  leaves  fell  down; 
85 


Silently  we  passed  over  the  dead,  the  fallen, 

Over  flowers  and  branches  that  were  withered  there- 

And  the  air  was  weary  with  the  scent  of  other  days, 

A  fragrance  faint  and  pensive. 

The  sighing  of  the  leaves  beneath  our  feet 

Were  as  old  dreams  retold, 

Stirred  from  the  golden  quilt  of  memory, 

And  farewells  rang  their  whispering  bells, 

Tolling  the  days  away. 

But  peace  lay  folded  between  our  hands 

As  we  thought  of  the  vanishing  years 

And  of  love  dying  in  the  arms  of  love. 


Sometimes  I  look  into  the  glass 

And  see  my  face  without  the  conquering  light 

That  gave  me  glamour  when  I  gave  thee  love. 

Fain  would  I  bathe  in  the  fountains  of  beauty, 

To  glitter  with  the  crystals  of  her  sparkling  desire, 

And  touch  with  my  feet  the  floors  of  a  bright  paven  Hell, 

And  rear  my  head  among  the  lilies  of  Heaven. 

I  would  be  for  thee 

As  a  ring  of  white  flowers  on  the  sward, 

As  a  red  fire  playing  to  thy  breath, 

As  a  flock  of  kingfishers 

Surprised  from  the  dark  fringe  of  rushes! 

Remember  only  this, 

My  will  toward  all  loveliness,  and  look 

Deep  in  thyself  for  my  reflected  soul. 

VI 

Be  perfect — for  I  love  thee  more  in  thought 
Than  thou  canst  reach  in  every  trivial  day. 
Since  days  are  as  the  flowers  on  a  wreath 
86 


That  wither  while  we  bind  them  each  to  each. 

Only  the  soul  is  timeless,  and  no  round  of  days 

Can  wall  it  in  a  little  space  of  ground. 

Sometimes  our  minds  are  cheated  by  the  clock 

And  crave  love,  wisdom,  joy  within  an  hour, 

But  the  patient  spirit  stands 

Waiting  the  last  fulfilment. 

Around  thy  soul  my  thoughts  are  as  garlands 

Or  as  an  endless  rosary. 

Be  perfect!  lest  my  psalm  should  falter 

And  my  hands  part  from  the  unriveted  faith 

With  Amen  scarcely  sighed. 

1917 


87 


BODIES  heaving  like  waves, 
Sighing  through  the  dishevelled  tresses  of  foam, 
The  massive  whiteness  of  limbs  flung  out  of  shadow, 
Splashed  with  ecstasial  moonlight, 
Sculptured  voluptuously  in  ephemeral  marbles. 
Lingering  touch  of  fingers, 
Cooler  than  the  curving  ringlets  of  spray 
Fluting  the  new-blown  petals  of  a  shell, 
And  kisses  murmuring  as  the  lips  of  darkness 
Against  the  ivory  forehead  of  the  moon. 

1919 


88 


YOUR  face  to  me  is  like  a  beautiful  city 
Dreaming  forever  by  the  rough  wild  sea, 
And  1  the  ship  upon  a  wilderness  of  waves 
Heavily  laden  with  memories.  .   .   . 
I  roam  over  all  the  earth 
Making  rhymes  of  you,  and  singing  songs, 
Because  your  face  will  never  let  me  rest, 
Because  I  can  not  frame  it  in  a  star 
Surrounded  with  my  cloudy  reveries, 
Because  I  may  not  pluck  it  like  a  flower 
To  breathe  the  incense  of  its  perfumed  soul — 
Your  face  is  like  the  carved  hilt  of  a  sword 
Whose  sheath  is  in  my  breast  1 

1918 


89 


OH  !  why  will  you  not  let  me  love  you 
Well  enough  ? 
You  have  plucked  my  blossoms, 
Gathered  the  leaves 
And  revived  them  with  water; 
But  all  the  tortuous  roots 
Delving  for  your  spirit 
In  subterranean  passions 
With  a  blind  unresting  desire, 
Have  you  felt  them,  have  you  known? 
In  the  blackest  night  of  sleep 
Though  I  be  sunk  a  thousand  fathoms 
In  the  cerulean  depths  of  slow  oblivion, 
My  soul  still  swims  toward  you 
Against  the  envious  pressure  of  the  tide.  .   .   . 
You  who  are  so  tired,  so  filled  with  sleep 
That  you  would  brush  a  rose-leaf  from  your  cheek 
Lest  its  heaviness  should  stir  your  rest, 
How  can  you  shoulder  the  weight  of  my  great  burden 
That  is  too  vast  for  me  to  bear  alone? 
I  tell  you 

Love  is  no  little  thing, 
No  moth-winged  Cupid  painted  on  the  air, 
No  thin  flute  music  petaling  the  silence 
As  leaves  that  flutter  from  a  cherry  tree. 
It  is  the  thought  that  broods  upon  its  death, 
The  dread  of  mountains  looking  to  the  storm 
Ere  shrieks  of  lightning  cleave  their  breasts  in  twain. 
It  is  the  fire  that  pillars  up  the  stars 
To  mix  its  flame  with  their  eternal  gold. 
Oh,  listen  to  mel 

You  shall  hear  my  message  sung  from  sphere  to  sphere 
As  star-dust  pouring  a  path  through  Heaven. 
You  shall  know  me 
In  the  pensive  shadows  of  trees, 
In  the  luminary  phantoms 

90 


Reflected  in  the  stillness  of  a  lake; 

In  the  arrows  of  sunlight  shot  through  meshing  leaves 

And  quivering  in  the  moss; 

In  the  abandoned  play  of  breakers 

Showering  their  crystals  to  the  moon; 

In  the  folly  of  rainbow  dolphins. 

I  only  ask  of  you 

To  be  the  diver  in  my  deepest  pool, 

To  bring  from  out  its  blue  obscurity 

The  things  my  life  has  moulded  unaware, 

Treasures  my  passion  and  my  hunger  fashioned 

In  loneliness  of  prayer  unlit  by  life, 

Created  out  of  nothing  save  myself 

Within  the  blind  fast  silence  of  the  soul. 

1918 


91 


MY  devotion  kneels  to  you, 
Holding  a  candle  to  illumine  your  face. 
My  loneliness  is  your  shadow 
Along  the  solitary  roads. 
My  passion  is  a  book  between  your  hands 
Whose  leaves  are  as  the  leaves  of  violets, 
A  volume  of  pressed  flowers 
Scenting  your  fingers  though  you  read  it  not. 
And  my  white  faith 
Is  a  silken  surplice  clothing  you  in  peace. 

1919 


92 


ISLANDS 

A  S  launched  upon  the  loneliness  of  time 
<**     We  float  and  dream  of  what  the  waves  conceal, 
Each  like  a  thought  that  rolls  with  rapid  zeal 
Succeeded  by  a  breaker  of  fierce  crime, 
Or  curling  passion,  or  a  rhythm  of  rhyme, 
Or  indolent  ripple  sighing  at  the  keel — 
Beyond  us,  though  our  fretted  longings  reel, 
The  lulled  horizon  sleeps,  the  still  hours  climb — 
So  toss  our  weary  ships,  till  from  afar 
Our  visioned  island  rises  suddenly, 
Where  palaces  like  cloudy  colours  are, 
With   scented  gardens  terraced  to  the  sea, 
The  silver  steps  to  our  appointed  star 
Where  gleam  the  spires  that  pierce  eternity. 

1917 


93 


MANY  things  I'd  find  to  charm  you, 
Books  and  scarves  and  silken  socks, 
All  the  seven  rainbow  colours 
Black  and  white  with  'broidered  clocks. 
Then  a  stick  of  polished  whalebone 
And  a  coat  of  tawny  fur, 
And  a  row  of  gleaming  bottles 
Filled  with  rose-water  and  myrrh. 
Rarest  brandy  of  the  'fifties, 
Old  liqueurs  in  leather  kegs, 
Golden  Sauterne,  copper  sherry 
And  a  nest  of  plover's  eggs. 
Toys  of  tortoise-shell  and  jasper, 
Little  boxes  cut  in  jade; 
Handkerchiefs  of  finest  cambric, 
Damask  cloths  and  dim  brocade. 
Six  musicians  of  the  Magyar, 
Madness  making  harmony; 
And  a  bed  austere  and  narrow 
With  a  quilt  from  Barbary. 
You  shall  have  a  bath  of  amber, 
A  Venetian  looking-glass, 
And  a  crimson-chested  parrot 
On  a  lawn  of  terraced  grass. 
Then  a  small  Tanagra  statue 
Found  anew  in  ruins  old, 
Or  an  azure  plate  from  Persia, 
Or  my  hair  in  plaits  of  gold; 
Or  my  scalp  that  like  an  Indian 
You  shall  carry  for  a  purse, 
Or  my  spilt  blood  in  a  goblet  .    .   . 
Or  a  volume  of  my  verse. 

1916 


94 


LAMPLIGHT  AND  STARLIGHT 


I  AMP-POSTS 

THE  eternal  flame  of  laughter  and  desire 
Breaks  the  long  darkness  with  a  little  glance, 
Till  all  the  gloom  is  radiant  in  a  dance 
Of  yellow  hopefulness,  reflecting  Are 
That  dreams  from  Heaven's  lamps  as  we  aspire 
Sadly  toward  their  jubilance — Romance 
I  >f  faery  glitter  in  the  streets  of  chance — 
Those  beacon-trees  that  blossom  from  the  mire 
Within  the  fog  of  our  despairing  gloom; 
In  the  glum  alleys,  down  the  haunted  night 
Through  tunnelling  of  subterranean   doom, 
Among  the  grovelling  shadows,  kingly  bright, 
They  bear  their  coronets  of  golden  bloom 
To  front  our  anguish  with  their  brave  delight. 

1917 


''7 


LONDON 

RICHER  than  fields  of  corn  that  fire  in  summer, 
Strange  as  the  moon  on  forest  rising  sudden, 
More  fearful  and  beloved  than  peace  or  silence, 
Heart  with  my  heart  at  pace  in  throbbing  fever, 
Calling  towards  me  with  a  voice  incessant. 
Thou  that  begot  me :  From  whose  streets  triumphant 
I,  coloured  fiercely  with  thy  passion,  wakened! 
I  sucked  red  wine,  not  milk,  from  thy  gaunt  bosom, 
My  senses  in  thy  fearfulness  found  beauty, 
And  honey  in  thine  oaths  and  lamentations. 
I  played  about  thy  feet  that  know  not  resting 
And  bathed  me  in  the  sweat  of  thine  endeavour. 

When  on  thy  gala-nights  the  thronged  lamps  glitter, 

Sparkle  like  sequins,  and  the  plumes  of  shadow 

With  curling  smoke,  with  rain  and  rippling  gutter 

Are  tossed  in  feathered  gaiety  about  thee — 

Thick  grow  the  crowded  streets  in  coloured  pageant, 

Kaleidoscope  of  people,  circling,  crossing, 

Till  the  brain  frenzies  to  a  thousand  patterns, 

While  the  ears  buzz  with  noises  of  their  laughter; 

Shouts  hoarse  and  coarse  and  shrill  in  one  great  roaring, 

As  of  the  angry  ocean  in  her  travail  .   .   . 

They  haunt  me  in  the  tranquil  of  the  forest, 

Those  faces  pain  has  marked  and  toil  has  mangled; 

Pangs  greater  than  the  lonely  Crucifixion 

Here  crucified  each  day  with  lust  and  hunger, 

Hung  up  unlovely  in  the  open  market; 

Made  gay  with  paper  garlands,  covered  over 

With  tinsel  loincloth,  painted  like  a  puppet, 

Lest  the  elect  in  passing  should  be  startled, 

Lest  they  should  smear  the  blameless  brow  of  honour  1 

With  bloody  shoes  and  spinning-wheels  of  traffic 

Vermilion-splashed,  the  city  rushes  onward, 

And  thorns  of  death  and  lust  and  fruitless  labour 

98 


Lie  underneath  the  feet  forever  dancing. 

Gay  tunes  are  rasped  upon  a  weary  fiddle, 

Or  voice  of  moaning  in  the  tinkling  cymbal, 

Offspring  of  humour  from  disaster's  bowels. 

I  love  the  bitter  and  the  rude,  the  drunken, 

The  tramps  and  thieves  that  skulk  among  the  shadows; 

The  faces  red  as  fire  and  dead  as  ashes, 

A  million  faces  scattered  like  confetti, 

All  changing,  whirling,  trodden  into  nothing. 

There  Beauty  wanders  strange,  an-hungered,  weary, 

Throned  on  a  dust-heap,  or  triumphant  reeling 

In  mad  disorder  from  the  couch  of  chaos. 

0  ragged  Beauty,  through  the  mournful  houses, 
How  frail  the  feet  that  lead  the  dawn  towards  us, 
Blushed  in  the  sunrise  with  a  great  ambition, 
Spent  in  the  evening  like  a  rose  of  fever, 
Fainting  before  us  paler  than  a  lily. 

While  here  each  day  self-satisfied  and  placid 
Moves  opulent  among  the  groves  of  summer; 
The  larks  delight,  the  laughter  of  the  thrushes, 
The  kindly  peasants  in  their  ruddy  orchard, 
Please  for  a  while  until  the  spirit  sickens 
And  turns  her  panting  to  her  ancient  lover. 

Oh,  well  I  know  the  quickening  of  the  pulses, 

Joy  bursting  through  disgust  as  field  and  pasture 

Grow  fewer,  paler,  till  the  eager  houses 

Like  hungry  animals  eat  up  the  spaces 

And  close  upon  the  miles  that  God  created, 

With  triumph  of  man's  greed.     As  warriors  listening 

To  the  far  rhythm  in  the  drums  of  battle, 

As  seamen  hear  the  mighty  tide-wave  bursting, 

1  feel  the  scamper  of  your  feet  approaching 

And  your  great  starving  arms  and  strangling  fingers 
That  drag  me  back  to  my  perverted  I  leaven  1 
1914 
99 


SLOWLY  the  pale  feet  of  morning 
Tread  out  the  ashes  of  midnight  still  burning  with  fever- 
ous lamplight, 
Colourless,  cold,  as  the  rainclad 
Sleep-drugged  river  that  carries  the  wreckage  of  cities  out 
sea-ward. 
Slowly  the  fingers  of  dawn-light 
Snuff  out  the  candles  that  yearned  to  those  Gods  of  delirium, 

Sleep-huge  as  shadows  grimacing 
From  niches  made  black  with  the  smoke  of  a  fire-spangled 
passion. 
Smoothly  the  wild  hair  of  darkness 
Is  plaited  for  rest,  and  the  faces  of  visions  are  covered  with 
sleep  veils. 
Patiently,  Morning,  the  priestess 
Drones  out  a  psalm  for  the  souls  that  we  damned  in  the 
blackness, 
Gashed  with  the  daggers  of  street-lights, 
Crushing  the  poisonous  berries  of  sinister  kisses, — 

Morning  with  healing  and  kindness 
Folds  up  the  dresses  dishevelled  with  terror  and  laughter, 

Sweeps  up  the  rags  of  our  shadows 
That  danced  in  a  red  smoke  of  dreams  on  the  walls  of 
oblivion. 

1919 


100 


WHAT  have  I  to  do  with  them, 
The  red  athletes  in  their  snow-white  clothes? 
They  are  sun  lovers  and  moon  haters, 
Toiling  or  playing  in  the  fields 
Whereon  no  shadows  lie, 
Pensively,  whispering  together — 
They  are  space  lovers  and  haters  of  the  stars, 
Soundly  they  sleep  by  night  nor  ever  see 
The  tiaraed  brows  of  darkness. 
I  weary  of  their  striving  upward  and  onward, 
Away  from  the  green  hush  of  twilight, 
Where  silence  drips  from  the  trees, 
Away  from  the  solemn  avenues 
Where  the  ghosts  blow  by 
Along  with  a  drift  of  leaves. 

Let  us  linger  awhile 

Far  away  from  the  frets  and  wars  of  the  world, 

From  the  strong  men 

With  their  strident  hymning  voices  and  marching  feet — 

Let  us  walk  alone 

For  the  love  of  our  own  shadows 

Stretching  their  length  on  lawns  of  powdered  silver, 

With  behind  us  the  sky's  grey  curtain 

Drawn  backward  from  the  moon.  .   .    . 

Let  us  sit  by  the  fireside 

And  hear  the  wind's  shrill  orchestras, 

Fiddle  and  fife  and  flute, 

And  omened  bagpipe  screaming.  .    .    . 

Let  us  lie  abed  and  dream 

Through  the  long  summer's  morning 

Of  trivial  things,  and  beautiful.   .    .    . 

Let  us    dance    with    Folly   when    midnight   knocks   on    his 

golden  gong; 
Let  us  run  through  pools  of  wine 
And  be  splashed  with  purple. 
101 


Let  us,  being  sick,  make  merry, 
And  rejoice  when  we  are  weary. 
Let  us  sit  by  our  grave  as  at  a  banquet, 
Drinking  to  Death. 

What  have  we  to  do  with  them, 
Sons  of  the  sun  and  the  soil, 
Daughters  of  the  hearth  and  the  field? 
They  that  remake  the  world 
Melting  our  idols  for  silver, 
Our  goblets  for  gold ; 
Tearing  our  temples  down 
To  build  their  red  brick  villages. 

The  doomed  world  faints  into  mist, 

World  of  our  indolence  and  dreams, 

And  the  faces  and  bodies  we  love 

Sink  through  oblivion,  and  are  seen 

Dimly,  as  divers  through  the  waters. 

Old  worlds  and  new  worlds ! 

Let  us  slip  between  them, 

And  float  on  the  stream  that  floweth  nowhither — 

Our  red  ambitions  burn 

To  a  blue  smoke  of  forgetting; 

Our  moonshine  faints  on  the  tide  that  goeth  out, 

As  the  sun  leers  to  the  tide  that  cometh  in. 

1918 


102 


AMONG  the  crumbling  arches  of  decay- 
Where  all  around  the  red  new  buildings  crept, 
Where  huge  machines  had  rolled  the  past  away, 
And  the  dead  princes  lay  accursed  and  slept; 

Among  the  ruins  I  beheld  a  man 

Who  heeded  not  the  engines  as  they  neared, 

Painting  dead  carnivals  upon  a  fan, 

He  smiled  and  trifled  with  his  pointed  beard. 

And  here  and  there  were  flung  a  mess  of  things, 
Tokens  and  fripperies  and  faded  dresses, 
Kept  from  the  courtships  of  a  thousand  kings, 
Tossed  roses  for  the  tossing  of  caresses. 

A  carven  sabre  hung  upon  the  wall, 
A  toy  thing,  with  no  rust  of  blood  upon  it, 
A  tray  of  glasses,  an  embroidered  shawl, 
A  muff,  a  bottle  and  a  feathered  bonnet. 

And  mirrors  flashed  their  argent  memories 

Out  of  the  shadows  where  they  laughed  and  gleamed, 

While  ghostly  faces  of  past  vanities 

Come  back  to  dream  there  where  they  once  had  dreamed. 

The  stranger  turned  his  head  and  bowed  to  me 
And  waved  me  vaguely  to  a  gilded  chair. 
I  spoke:  "You  arc  a  connoisseur,  I  see, 
You  really  have  a  fine  collection  there." 

He  bowed  to  me  again,  and  in  his  hand 
Dangled  a  string  of  gems,  they  caughl  my  eye 
With  beckoning  lights — I  could  not  understand — 
His  fingers  seemed  to  touch  them  like  a  sigh 
103 


So  much  he  loved  their  frail  inconsequence. 
I  spoke  of  progress  conquering  decay, 
And  tired  the  stillness  with  my  common  sense 
Loud-spoken  in  the  jargon  of  the  day. 

But  I  have  never  met  so  queer  a  man, 
"I  better  love  my  memories,"  he  said, 
"Look  at  those  painted  figures  on  the  fan, 
How  delicate  and  wistful  are  the  dead." 

1917 


104 


AS  a  nun's  face  from  her  black  draperies 
So  full  of  mystery  the  moon  looks  down. 
She  dreams  of  a  passion  that  shall  outlive  time, 
Of  Beauty's  face  beheld  unveiled  and  close, 
Of  God  Who  blows  the  worlds  like  bubbles  up, 
Smiling  away,  to  watch  them  swell  and  die. 
She  dreams  of  music  played  among  the  stars 
When  the  slow  tongues  of  silence  are  unloosed. 
Above  the  city  glittering  giddily, 
Above  the  jostling  heads  of  man  she  moves, 
Strange  as  a  dreamer  walking  in  her  sleep. 

1912 


105 


THE  sun  is  lord  of  life  and  colour, 
Blood  of  the  rose  and  hyacinth, 
Hair  of  the  sea  and  forests, 
Crown  of  the  cornfields, 
Body  of  the  hills. 
The  moon  is  the  harlot  of  Death, 
Slaughterer  of  the  Sun, 
Priestess  and  poisoner  she  goes 
With  all  her  silver  flock  of  wandering  souls, 
Her  chant  of  wailing  waters, 

The  bed  of  shimmering  dust  from  which  she  comes 
Bound  all  around  with  bandages  of  mist.  .   .   . 
The  living  are  as  blossoms  and  fruit  on  the  tree, 
The  dead  are  as  lilies  and  wind  on  the  marshes; 
The  living  are  as  cherries  that  bow  to  the  morning 
Beckoning  to  the  loitering  stranger, 
The  wind,  to  sing  them  his  eerie  ballads. 
The  dead  are  as  frozen  skeleton  branches 
Whereon  the  stillness  perches  like  an  owl.  .    .    . 
The  dead  are  as  snows  on  the  cherry  orchard. 

1918 


106 


BAHAMA  ISLANDS 

I 

ALL  down  the  somnolent  street  where  pale  tinged  houses 
dream 
The  negroes  go,  black  faces  crowding  together; 
And  between  the  palm  leaves  dancing  with  lethargic  ges- 
tures, 
The  bright  long  water  spreads,  green  as  a  parrot's  wing — 
We  have  rest  here  and  a  monotony  of  wheels, 
A  peaceful  noise  like  bees  that  moan  in  June — 
And  the  sun  rusts  not,  but  his  brazen  heraldries 
Tarnished  with  evening  are  burnished  with  the  dawn. 
Yet   pain    comes    stabbing   in   the   night   with   silver   knife 

through  the  window, 
A  blanched  moon  full  of  fear  and  the  burden  of  desire — 
And  nothing  rids  us  utterly  of  grief, 
We  who  have  pilgrim  souls  that  will  not  sleep. 

II 

Moonlight  planting  the  world  with  lilies,  so  hushed  it  seems 

and  scented, 
But  in  the  chapel  is  a  droning  where  the  negroes  chant  their 

hymns 
And  we  in  aureoled  loneliness  go  down  the  street  contented, 
With  hearts  that  beat  for  pleasure  to   the   rhythm  of  our 

limbs. 

1917 


107 


THOUGHTS  OF  LONDON 

OH,  have  I  bartered  and  forgotten  thee, 
Selling  thy  tarnished  twilights  for  gold  sun, 
Relinquishing  thy  dreams  that  used  to  run 
A  ragged  troop  along  thy  streets  with  me? 
Cast  off  the  glitter  of  thy  jewelry, 
Thy  lamp-light,  starlight,  colours  crudely  spun, 
The  eloquent  ugliness,  the  roofs  of  dun, 
The  fogs  that  swathe  in  bands  of  mystery? 
Mother  of  dreams  and  laughter  and  despair! 
Thy  joy  my  Heaven  is,  my  Hell  thy  pain, 
Thy  labyrinthian  streets  wind  everywhere, 
Thy  sins  and  passions  baffle  me  again; 
And  all  my  hopes  thy  lamps  that  flick  and  glare, 
And  all  my  griefs  thy  beggars  in  the  rain. 

19 1 8 


108 


STREETS 

I  AM  going 
Up  and  down  the  roads  and  alleys 
Through  the  forests  of  the  city, 
Hunting  thoughts,  hunting  dreams. 
My  mind  shall  wander  through  the  streets 
Whistling  to  a  vague  adventure, 
Plucking  strange  fancies  where  they  lurk  and  peer 
And  casting  them  away. 
Dusk  is  creeping  through  the  town 
Lighting  the  lamps  and  loitering, 
Leaving  smoky  clouds  of  shadow, 
Hovering  clouds  of  peace; 
And  behind  her  race  the  winds 
Whining  to  the  scent  of  darkness, 
Scattering  the  dust 
With  their  swift  hounds'  feet.  .   .   . 
I  am  a  hunter  in  the  city's  jungle, 
Exploring  all  her  secret  mysteries. 
I  know  her  well, 
The  moaning  highways, 
And  whispering  alleys, 
The  chimney-dishevelled  roofs 
Where  the  moon  walks  delicately 
As  a  stray  spectral  cat; 
The  little  forlorn  squares 
Where  one  tree  stands 
Drooping  bedraggled  hair  and  fingers 
Over  the  benches  where  the  people  sit 
And  stir  not  from  their  sullen  postures, 
Staring  out  where  evening  passes 
With  such  a  sauntering  dreamy  step. 
I  know  her  parks  that  spring  had  decked  with  garlands, 
Fluttered  with  Bass  and  child  imaginings, 
Powdered  with  blossoms  exquisite  and  shy, 

109 


Haunted  with  lovers  and  their  last  year's  ghosts. 

Now  stripped  with  autumn,  as  the  ragpicker 

Wrapped  in  his  tattered  coat  emaciate 

Picks  up  the  littered  wreck  of  holiday 

To  mount  the  dust  heap  where  our  memories  lie 

Sprawled  in  a  mess  of  ruins 

I  know  her  monotone  of  gloomy  mansions, 

Repeating  each  in  each  a  dull  despair, 

Indifferent  and  dignified; 

Those  tarnished  prisons  lined  with  white  and  gold, 

With  dismal  silences   of  velvet  carpets, 

Where  starving  souls  are  kept 

Feeding  upon  each  other's  isolations, 

Not  daring  to  escape.   .    .    . 

Some  roads  seem  steep  as  mountains,  weary  me 

With  their  crude  temples  built  in  praise  of  lust, 

Squatting  and  smiling  at  some  hideous  dream 

Of  fat  bejewelled  goddesses,  or  gods 

Frock-coated,  undismayed  by  prayers  and  tears, 

Their  hats  atilt  like  halos  on  their  heads.  .   .   . 

I  love  the  ribald  multi-coloured  crowd, 

Its  radiant  loves,  and  laughters,  all  the  faces 

That  are  as  songs,  as  flowers,  as  hovering  Stardust. 

I  love  the  memory-crusted  taverns 

In  which  my  heart  has  leapt  to  a  fiddler's  tune 

Until  the  dawn, 

Like  a  white  minstrel  stopped  to  sing 

Fantastic  serenades,  and  called  me  forth 

Where  through  the  crystal  chandeliers  of  morning 

Dew-prismed  shone  the  sun.   .   .   . 

I  love  the  narrow  streets  whose  crippled  houses 

Are  bathed  in  vitriol  twilights, 

Spitting  smoke, 

Or  making  oaths  and  mouths  at  one  another.  .   .   . 

While  between 

no 


The  flaring  tinsel  lights  of  shop  and  window 

Are  gaps  of  goblin  darkness  passaging 

Into  Cimmerian  depths  of  mystery  and  sin.   .   .  . 

Wan  children  stare  at  me,  and  in  their  eyes 

I  see  the  flickering  pallor  of  the  lamps, 

Reflective  of  the  solitude  of  stars.  .   .   . 

And  I  am  thrilled 

With  horror  and  the  hope  for  tragedies.  .   .   . 

But,  they  surround  my  heart  these  weary  streets, 

Yea,  in  my  soul  they  cut  their  mournful  paths, 

And  through  them  pass  forever 

Those  shadow  figures  trudging  through  the  grey 

Like  penitent  souls  through  haunted  corridors.   .    .    . 

Ah,  Grief,  thou  wanderer, 

Thou  maker  of  music,  lingering  and  sweet ! 

Here  dost  thou  pause  to  play  thy  shrill  faint  tunes, 

Thy  fingers  touch  the  stops  to  loose  our  tears, 

And  shake  our  hearts,  and  fold  our  hands  in  prayer. 

Through  all  the  winding  mazes  of  the  city 

Thy  stooping  shoulders  and  thy  pitiful  face  are  seen, 

And  thou  dost  stand  before  the  gate  of  brass, 

And  by  the  iron  door, 

Under  the  windows  where  we  sit  and  wait 

For  some  sweet  promise  to  unfold  itself 

From  the  shut  scrolls  of  sleep, 

And  at  the  dusty  curtain  that  divides 

Glory  from   Death, 

And  lover  from  the  lover.  .   .   . 

Now  in  my  room  I  sit 

And  round  me  falls  the  darkness 

In  rustling  folds  of  peace. 

But  round  my  heart  1  know 

No  scarves  of  sleep  and  silence  can  be  bound 

To  shut  the  city  out. 

in 


For  I  shall  feel  the  rush  of  streets 

Shooting  inquisitive  fingers  into  chaos, 

Piercing  the  night's  remote  divinity. 

And  I  shall  never  rid  me  of  these  scars 

That  time  and  man  have  cut  into  my  thought, 

Never  shake  off  my  shoulders 

The  burden  of  the  city's  pain. 

Oh,  never  shall  we  escape  thee, 

Mother  of  mutiny  and  want, 

Thou  beautiful  mistress  of  Grief  .   .   . 

Oh,  never  shall  we  escape  thy  insomnial  nights 

Beating  with  ineloquent  hands 

The  tambourines  of  time, 

The  drums  of  war; 

Fevering  our  minds 

With  the  swollen  traffic  of  thoughts, 

The  wheels  and  rattle  of  an  endless  search.  .   .   . 

Tired  I  am  with  wandering, 

Pricked  with  the  lights  and  jostled  by  the  worlds, 
More  jaded  than  the  Moon,  more  hopeless,  grey, 
Than  that  sad  pilgrim  lost  amid  the  stars  1  .  .  . 

1918 


112 


LAUGHTER  and  singing  come  with  the  morning, 
When  Life  doth  mask  his  face  with  a  gilded  visor, 
And  dons  his  arrogant  clothes. 
But  in  the  night, 

When  the  unsheathed  moon  stands  naked  and  pale, 
We  too  put  off  our  opulent  disguise 
And  stand  alone  in  the  baffling  darkness, 
Fighting  with  our  sins, 
Weeping  for  our  loneliness, 
That  moon-like  gropes  forever  through  the  desolate  air. 

1918 


iM 


IN  the  night  I  hear  my  loneliness  calling 
The  long  shrill  note  of  the  seabird's  cry 
Over  the  fuming  spite  of  breakers, 
Over  the  brumous,  sulky  tides. 
All  the  ocean  is  craving  Heavenward, 
And  the  wild  sky  crushes  downward  toward  the  sea, 
Where  the  clouds  stoop  their  passionate  bodies, 
And  the  waves  rear  their  supplicating  hands. 
Mine  eyes  grow  tired  of  looking  outward  forever, 
Away  from  the  firelight  and  my  sleeping  idols, 
To  where  the  darkness  is  shattered  with  gusts  of  white, 
Wings  of  ship,  and  bird,  and  cloud,  and  wave, 
Flashing  their  signals  of  unrest. — 
My  longing  is  a  warm  thing  in  a  cold  street, 
Taking  refuge  by  the  chinks  of  lighted  doors — 
My  longing  is  a  pale  ghost  stepping  into  the  sunlight 
That  falls  in  golden  curtains  sumptuous  and  hushed — 
My  longing  is  a  fiddler  making  a  thin  tune  through  the 

silence, 
Through  the  heavy  pauses  of  sleep. — 
Ah !    Stop  up  my  ears  lest  I  hear  my  longing  call, 
Lest  I  hear  my  loneliness  crying! 

1918 


114 


SUNDAY 

HOW  beautiful  is  the  world's  delight. 
How  trivial,  yet  as  sweet  as  a  passing  dream 
That  makes  the  harassed  sleeper  in  the  night 
Smile,  and  on  waking  sigh.    Forever  the  stream 
Of  time  moves  onward;  as  in  coloured  boats 
A  thousand  souls  go  sailing, 
And  stilly  down  the  tide  my  spirit  floats 
Singing  or  wailing 

To  the  tune  the  waters  make.  Here  we  forget  a  space 
The  crawling  sins  of  man  that  sting  and  gloat, 
The  pain  and  fear  that  haggers  every  face, 
But  vaguely  and  remote 

The  strident  trumpet  and  the  clamorous  voices  sound — 
Grief  doth  forget  to  curse  her  Gods  or  pray, 
While  pagan  follies  squander  all  around 
Their  brief  gay  hours  in  holiday; 
For  all  prayers  die  when  laughter  is  on  the  lips. — 
How  frail  the  moods  of  joy,  how  sweet  to  see  them  pass 
Like  bubbles  on  the  tide,  like  coloured  ships 
Sailing  on  glass ! 

1918 


us 


THE  leaves  are  singing,  and  the  sea, 
And  the  sand  in  the  wind, 
Blown  grass  and  hurrying  people; 
Full  of  melodious  strings  and  lutes  and  flutes 
Rustling  and  whispering  forever. 
The  sad  music  of  Life  is  in  my  ears, 
Never  ceasing,  never  asleep, 

And  my  heart  is  strung  between  chord  and  chord 
Like  a  crucifix  in  a  rosary. 

1918 


116 


HOW  soundly  sleepeth  the  fool, 
With    profane    snore    taunting    the    solemn-pillared 
night — 
He  hath  no  dreams  of  restless,  subtle  forms 
That  shift  across  a  feverish  vacancy; 
Nor  doth  he  hear  the  drums  of  time 
Beating  against  oblivion  tunes  of  war, 
Goading  the  crippled  hours  on  their  endless  march — 
But  waketh  to  yawn  in  the  face  of  the  sun, 
Then  turneth  back  to  sleep.  .   .   . 

How  soundly  the  wise  man  sleepeth, 

Couched  royally  in  the  purple  of  the  dark 

With  his  white  mistress,  Peace — 

And  when  the  morning  stealeth  on  his  rest, 

As  a  rose  he  doth  pluck  her  from  the  spreading  tree  of  days, 

And  reviveth  his  heart 

With  the  perfume  of  the  world.  .    .    . 

But  'twixt  the  wise  and  the  foolish 

Many  nights  shed  sorrow  and  fear, 

And  nets  are  spread  for  timid  feet, 

And  the  waves  beat  on  the  shifting  sand.  .    .   . 

1918 


117 


MOONLIT  lilacs  under  the  window, 
And  the  pale  smell  of  their  falling  blossoms, 
And  the  white  floating  beams  like  luminous  moths 
Fluttering  from  bloom  to  bloom. 
Sprays  of  lilac  flowers 

Frothing  at  the  green  verge  of  midnight  waves, 
Frozen  to  motionless  icicles. 
Moonlight  flows  over  me, 
Spreads  her  bright  watery  hair  over  my  face, 
Full  of  illicit,  marvellous  perfumes 
Wreathed  with  syringa  and  plaited  with  hyacinths; 
Hair  of  the  moonlight  falling  about  me, 
Straight  and  cool  as  the  drooping  tresses  of  rain. 

1918 


118 


OLD  woman  forever  sitting 
Alone  in  the  large  hotel  under  the  fans, 
Infinitely  alone  where  around  you  spin 
So  many  lives  like  painted  tops, 
Smearing  the  void  a  moment  with  their  hues, 
Giddily  catching  at  balance  as  they  pause. 
What  crime  was  yours,  old  woman, 
What  sin  against  the  Earth 
That  she  should  give  you  now 
A  cap  of  dust  and  furrows  on  your  cheeks, 
And  at  the  end 
A  hole  dug  in  the  mould? 
Is  death  the  promise  of  Fate's  last  rebound, 
Revenge  of  Time  that  waits  within  the  clock 
And  laughs  awry  at  life, 

For  a  kiss,  for  a  dream,  for  a  child  that  you  bore, 
For  a  fresh  rose  pinned  to  your  bosom? 
The  owl  is  in  your  spirit, 

Blinking  through  the  oldest  tree  of  wisdom — 
And  now  your  fingers  are  weaving 
The  cold  pale  invisible  blossoms  of  death 
Into  a  waxen  wreath, 
And  Time 

Sits  down  beside  you  knitting  with  quick  hands 
Grey  counterpanes  to  cover  up  a  gravel 

1918 


119 


LONELINESS  I  love, 
And  that  is  why  they  have  called  me  forth  into  the 

streets. 
Loneliness  I  love, 

But  the  crowd  has  clutched  at  me  with  fawning  hands,  .   .   . 
My  spirit  speaks 

In  the  scented  quietness  of  a  divine  melancholy 
Murmuring  the  tunes 

For  which  my  dreams  are  the  delicate  instruments. 
The  shadowy  silences 

Have  made  me  beautiful  and  dressed  me  in  velvet  dignities, 
And  that  is  why 
The   noise    of   tambourines    has    maddened    my    soul    into 

dancing, 
And  I  am  clad 

In  the  lust-lipped  whispering  of  furtive  caresses. 
Holiness  I  love, 

And  touching  the  virginal  pierced  feet  of  martyrs, 
The  crucified  feet 

Nestled  among  lilies  and  hallowing  candles. 
Holiness  I  love 

And  the  melodious  absolution  falling  on  my  sins. 
But  that  is  why 

Blasphemous  priests  have  forced  my  hands  to  tear 
The  vesture  of  secrecy 
Which  hides  the  human  nakedness  of  God. 

*l*  *P  1* 

1918 


120 


f"  MET  an  Indian  underneath  a  tree,  under  a  ragged  tree, 

*  His  face  was  yellow  and  wrinkled  like  some  stone 
whereon  a  God  had  writ 

And  his  emaciated  fingers  drew  circles  in  the  dust.   .  .   . 

I  bent  my  mouth  to  his  ear,  crying  "O  father,  O  Prophet! 

I  have  wandered  far  over  the  earth  troubled  with  doubts 
that  will  not  let  me  rest, 

Canst  thou  not  tell  me  with  all  thy  wizardries  and  medita- 
tions 

The  purpose  of  our  lives  upon  this  world, 

The  secret  truth  Earth  shelters  in  her  womb?" 

But  he  was  listening  to  the  whispering  of  the  mountains, 

To  the  boom  of  God's  paces  on  the  rocks, 

And  the  swishing  steps  of  his  followers  in  the  rivers. 

Then  suddenly  he  pointed  to  the  arched  doorway  in  be- 
tween the  hills, 

And  the  mysterious  purple  curtain  of  the  dusk  that  drooped 
from  cliff  to  cliff. 

I  saw  in  his  eyes  the  vision  of  highborn  ghosts, 

Of  divine  ivory  faces  wreathed  with  the  flowers  of  wis- 
dom— 

And  I  knew  that  he  had  found  only  the  half-spoken  prom- 
ises of  I  leaven.   .    .    . 

*  *  * 

I  saw  a  drunkard  laughing  in  a  tavern, 

I  lis  cup  was  tilted  and  the  wine  spilt  crimson  on  the 
sprawled  arms  and  distracted  hair  of  a  woman  I  alien 
asleep, 

I   watched   him   there  and   wondered 

If  ever  the  bubbling  goblins  of  wine  had  whispered  him 
life's  secret. 

But  he  raised  the  cup  of  his  carousals  and  ga/ed  a!  empti- 
ness, 

Toasting  some  wild,  irreverent  dream, 

121 


Some   flame-red   salamander  pirouetting   among  the   dead 
waste  ashes  of  time — 

And  I  knew  that  he  had  found  only  the  secrets  of  sleep.  .  .  . 

*  *  * 

A  woman  sat  within  a  little  house, 
Scolding  and  singing  ballads  to  her  child, 
And  all  around  came  the  quarrel  of  children's  voices. 
Yet  one  boy  sat  apart  within  the  furthest  corner  of  the  room 
Painting  an  animal  with  coloured  chalks. 
I  lingered  by  the  fire  thinking  of  life,  its  vanities  and  mys- 
teries, 
But  the  woman  did  not  heed  me, 
Nor  her  pale  son  that  sat  so  hunched  and  still, 
Painting  his  visions  with  the  broken  chalks, 
For  they  had  discovered  the  absorbing  painful  secrets  of 

giving  birth.  .    .    . 

*  *  * 

It  was  evening  as  I  wandered, 

By  a  lake  two  lovers  leaned,  smiling  to  see  their  faces  in 

the  water, 
For  they  had  found  within  each  other's  souls 
An  argent  flattering  mirror  wherein  to  gaze  and  see  their 

faces  change  with  all  the  moods  and  shadows  of  the 

day.  .   .   . 
Not  here  should  I  discover  the  answer  to  bring  light  into 

my  darkness, 
Into  the  dim  psychic  crystals  of  my  soul  opalled  with  the 

changing  colours  of  unrest — 
So  I  went  away  into  the  loneliness,  asking  the  forests  and  the 

mountains  and  the  sea 
The  knowledge  of  life's  baffling  mysteries. 
But  they  were  roaring  in  a  wind  of  memories, 
Gathering  the  rain  into  their  bodies  to  make  them  fierce 

and  strong, 
Heaving  their  shoulders  upward  to  the  morning, 
Crowning  their  foreheads  with  sunlight. 
122 


And  I  knew  that  they  were  Life  itself, 

The   pushing  vehemence   that   rushes   from  the  strangling 

arms  of  Death, 
Nor  could  they  guess 
The  purpose  of  God's  beauty  in  their  joy.  .   .   . 

1918 


123 


FROM  the  fathomless  depth  of  my  boredom,  from  the 
last  room  of  its  emptiness,  an  elf  has  come  to  play 
with  me. 

As  comes  a  little  gold  spider  to  a  prison  cell  teasing  the 
criminal  from  his  darkness  to  tear  at  a  thread  of  sunlight, 
and  kiss  the  mouth  of  a  shy  morning  whispering  through 
the  window. 

An  elf  has  come  to  dance  with  me,  blown  like  a  leaf  on 
the  path  of  my  autumn  lassitude. 

Sprightly  one,  dervish !  You  are  the  living  adventure 
born  of  my  dead  childhood,  you  are  the  small  god  in  the 
temples  of  my  unbelief,  you  are  the  bird  that  nests  in  ruined 
temples,  laying  your  silver  eggs  by  moonlight  and  singing 
when  the  pagan  birds  are  still. 

You  are  the  dream-sower  in  the  fields  of  sleep,  you  have 
jingled  the  star-bells  on  the  hood  of  darkness,  and  from  the 
knarled,  stark  tree  of  time  have  flung  me  the  apple  of 
eternal  laughter. 

1919 


124 


LOLLING  in  snow,  like  kings  in  ermine  coats,  the  gilt- 
crowned  bottles  lie.  .  .  .  Our  thoughts  are  dangled  in 
a  laughter  of  leaves  as  bunches  of  blue  and  yellow  grapes 
for  faery  beggars,  for  ragged  fancies  to  pluck  and  taste. 
Our  music  shall  be  the  minstrelsy  of  ghostly  ballad-mongers 
that  have  stolen  from  the  ashen  banquets  of  death  to  bless 
our  revels. 

Our  spirits  shall  flit  like  those  winged  faces  of  cherubs 
that  never  can  alight,  but  swing  forever  on  the  azure  ribbons 
of  the  sky. 

And  all  our  dreams  and  kisses  shall  be  as  the  rose-leaves 
falling  on  ancient  festivals,  as  the  shadows  of  rose-leaves 
falling  on  phantom  lovers  in  the  sleep-pillared  temples  of 
our  first  archaic  passion. 

1918 


125 


THE  roots  of  our  longing  are  probing  the  heart  of  night, 
delving  and  twining  together  that  our  ultimate  truth 
may  grow  out  of  the  darkness  that  bewilders  and  nourishes. 
Out  of  the  earth,  the  dust,  the  crystals  of  frost  that  bind 
themselves  like  a  tight  crown  over  our  heads. 
Through  the  mould  and  the  frost  our  hair  and  fingers  shall 
prick  their  spears  of  pallor  and  flame,  and  in  the  green 
ardour  of  our  up-rushing  leaves  the  red  goblets  of  fire 
shall  open,  and  masses  of  white  flowers,  milky  as  the  star- 
sprays  that  droop  over  Heaven,  shall  splash  their  bright 
foam  from  the  darkness,  as  waves  that  rise  and  break  into 
a  fountain  of  blossoms. 

1919 


126 


VAHDAH 

CL  X-AUREOLED  lilies  are  your  priestesses, 

^     They  stand  like  choirs  in  silver  surplices, 

Melodious  streams  of  silence  fill  the  room, 

And  pensive  listeners  lean  within  the  gloom 

Of  purple  quietness.     A  laughter  full  of  holiness — 

Like  the  wild  bells  of  lilies  ringing  in  the  loneliness 

Of  star-reflected  gardens  walled  with  night, — 

Thrills  from  your  soul  which  empties  its  delight 

As  rain  on  lilies,  or  as  sunlight  falling  slenderly 

To   gild   their   ivory   temples,    and   as   moonlight   shutting 

tenderly 
Their  alabaster  doors.  ...  A  white  peace  grows, 
And  love,  within  your  spirit  like  a  lily  and  a  rose. 

1918 


127 


STARLIT  silences! 
Breeding  fears,  swarming  with  sudden  deaths, 
"With  separations,  burdens,  and  despairs, 
Weaving  slow  eerie  fancies  in  my  brain  .    .    . 
Forlorn  shorn  monks  go  down  the  cloisters  of  quietness 
With  tortured  crucifixes  cut  in  ivory 
Clasped  in  their  praying  hands, 
And  psalmed  with  lips  renunciate  of  kisses  .   .   . 
Forgotten  days  are  painted  on  the  night 
In  parables  and  symbols  of  remorse 
That  jeer  from  out  the  wind-stirred  tapestries. 
The  hangman's  rope  coils  upward  like  a  snake 
Out  of  the  death-coloured  waters, 
While  the  black  barges  pass 
Funereal, 

Carrying  doom  from  mist  to  mist.  .   .   . 
And  madmen  steal  about  the  wintry  parks 
Under  the  high  glum  walls  of  an  asylum, 
With  eyes  lit  up  in  phosphorescent  ecstasies, 
With  fumbling  hands 
That  grope  for  things  invisibly  obscene. 
Even  the  clock 

Grown  idiot  too  from  keeping  madmen's  time 
Gibbers  the  hours  away  in  irrelevant  chimes.  .    .   . 
Silence  embalms  the  dead  with  scented  bands 
And  is  the  watchman  to  deserted  houses, 
And  draws  the  violet  curtain  on  the  day, 
And  fits  a  mask  of  silver  to  the  moon. 
Silence  brings  corpses  from  the  crypts  of  memory 
And  sits  them  round  us  in  the  empty  chairs, 
Opens  the  secret  chambers  of  our  hopes 
And  shows  us  there  in  awful  pantomime 
Lust  wreathing  love  with  poppies  and  with  ashes, 
And  Beauty  dressing  Sin  for  carnival, 
And  Peace  made  drunken  with  a  cup  of  blood. 
It  winds  as  ivy  round  our  listening  thoughts 

128 


Shutting  all  sounds  away,  enclosing  us 
Within  its  stifled  virid  twilight.  .   .    . 

Cry  out,  sing,  make  noises, 

Bacchantes,  revellers,  clowns! 

Bring  myriad  lamps  in  clusters,  likening  grapes 

That  spill  the  wine  of  light  into  our  gloom; 

Pressing  against  our  lips 

The  red  grape-kisses  of  pleasure. 

Bring  the  hounds, 

The  garlanded  white  ones, 

To  bay  and  snarl  and  tear  the  flying  rags 

Of  stillness  shadowing  away! 

Lean  over  me,  O  Life, 

And  whisper  all  thy  lying  flatteries 

That  drag  me  back  from  Silence  and  her  dead. 

I  have  kept  vigil  on  my  soul  too  long 

Within  this  vast  cathedral  of  dim  sleep, 

Languidly  gathering 

The  cold  grey  lilies  of  the  stars 

To  slip  between  her  passive  waxen  hands.  .  .  . 

1918 


129 


THE  mountain  is  an  Emperor. 
The  clouds  are  his  beard,  and  the  stars  his  diadem; 
His  bauble  is  the  moon; 

He  is  dressed  in  silver  forests,  and  the  mist  his  train; 
His  feet  are  two  white  rivers. 

1917 


130 


I  KNOW  what  happiness  is — 
It  is  the  negation  of  thought, 
The  shutting  off 

Of  all  those  brooding  phantoms  that  surround 
As  dank  trees  in  a  forest 
Cutting  the  daylight  into  rags, 
Caging  the  sun 
In  rusted  prison  bars. 
Happiness  loves  to  lie  at  a  river's  edge 
And  make  no  song, 

But  listen  to  the  water's  murmuring  wisdom, 
The  kissing  touch  of  leaves  wind-bowed  together, 
The  feathery  swish  of  cloud  wings  on  a  hill; 
Opening  wide  the  violet-petalled  doors 
Of  every  shy  and  cloistered  sense, 
That  all  the  scent  and  music  of  the  world 
May  rush  into  the  soul. 
And  happiness  expands 

I  he  rainbow  arch  for  a  procession  of  dreams, 
I  or  moth-like  fancies  winged  with  evening, 
For  dove-breasted  silences, 
For  shadowy  reveries 
And  starry  pilgrims.    .    .    . 
I  know  what  happiness  is — 
\t  is  the  giving  back  to  Karth 
( )f  all  our  furtive  thefts, 
1  he  lurid  jewels  that  we  stole  away 
From  passion,  sin  and  pain, 
Because  they  glittered  strangely,  luring  us 
With  their  forbidden  beauty. 
Because  our  childish  fingers  curiously 
Crave  the  pale  secrets  of  the  moon 
And  grope  for  dangerous  toys. 
1  [appmess  conns  in  giving  back  to  Farth 
The  things  we  took  (rum  her  with  violent  hands, 
Remembering  only 

131 


That  her  dust  is  our  garment, 

Her  fruits  our  endeavour, 

Her  waters  our  priestess, 

Her  leaves  our  interpreters  to  God, 

Her  hills  our  infinite  patience. 

1918 


132 


LONG  hath  the  pen  lain  idle  in  my  hand, 
Or  traced  slow  sentences  without  a  rhyme, 
Words  strung  at  random  to  beguile  the  time 
As  children  threading  beads  upon  a  strand. 
I  have  strayed  far  away  from  fairyland 
Whose  little  hills  grow  steep  and  hard  to  climb; 
I  creep  along  the  valleys  in  the  slime, 
Or  hide  me  like  an  ostrich  in  the  sand. 

For  I  have  sought  a  mellow  idleness, 
To  be  forever  buried  as  a  fly 
Lies  casketed  in  amber;  where  the  stress 
Of  peril,  hunger,  Death  can  never  cry 
To  wake  me  from  my  sanguine  weariness, 
Or  cloud  the  lucid  stillness  with  a  sigh. 

1918 


133 


I  LAID  my  heart  on  a  stone 
And  stood  in  the  wood  to  watch. 
Presently  a  priest  came  by; 
He  hid  it  in  his  cowl 
And  buried  it  in  the  graveyard. 
Now  is  it  grown  into  a  cyclamen  tree, 
Clustering  over  the  wall, 
Beckoning  far  along  the  twilight  road; 
Nodding  and  singing  where  the  cypress  moans, 
Ringing  its  little  bells  while  the  great  bell  tolls. 
Whiter  than  ghosts  are  its  flowers, 
And  its  scent  is  sweeter  than  ghostly  music — 
All  the   men   and   priests  that  pass 
In  the  night  when  the  stars  lean  down, 
Smell  the  heavy  fragrance  there 
And  feel  the  gentle  touch  of  dripping  dew. 
Then  they  cross  themselves  and  go 
Hurriedly,  warily, 
Dreaming  of  pale  women, 
Under  the  pale  stars. 

1918 


134 


THE  cold  light  steals  into  my  soul 
Revealing  its  emptiness, 
The  cold  winds  batter  at  my  heart 
And  make  its  lonely  tenant  shake  with  fear — 
The  raindrops  slide  across  the  window-glass 
Like  sighs  that  fall  from  patient  weariness; 
And  coldly  smiling  time 

Peers  with  his  clock-face,  ticking  in  my  brain 
The  pulse  of  a  monotonous  remorse. 

1918 


n-5 


THE  caravans  of  spring  are  in  the  town, 
Lighting  their  brilliant  torches  in  the  park, 
Dangling  their  bells,  engirdling  each  stark 
Black  tree  with  coloured  rings.     The  houses  frown 
Against  the  beryl  sky,  yet  wear  a  crown 
Of  hazy  dream,  or  flash  a  golden  spark 
Of  sun-fire  in  their  windows  glum  and  dark; 
The  people  blow  like  petals  up  and  down. 

But  London  tires  at  evening,  each  grey  street 
Mourns  as  the  slow  procession  passes  by, 
Traffic  and  crowd,  and  Time  on  loitering  feet. 
Spring  droops  his  lute,  the  slender  echoes  sigh, 
And  wistfully  the  jaded  revellers  meet, 
Their  pomp  in  tatters  and  their  wreaths  awry. 

1918 


136 


I   DREAD  the  beauty  of  approaching  spring 
Now  the  old  month  is  dead  and  the  young  moon 
Has  pierced  my  heart  with  her  sharp  silver  horns. 
My  tired  soul  is  startled  out  of  sleep 
By  all  the  urging  joy  of  bud  and  leaf, 
And  in  the  barren  yard  where  I  have  paced 
Content  with  prison  and  despair's  monotony, 
The  trees  break  into  music  wild  and  shrill, 
And  flowers  come  out  like  stars  amid  the  dust, 
Bewildering  my  loneliness  with  beauty.  .    .   . 
For  winter  with  her  melancholy  face 
Shone  back  my  miseries  as  in  a  glass, 
And  wept  and  whined  in  harmony  with  me; 
And  I  could  listen  by  the  withering  ashes 
To  the  ill-omened  drum  of  dropping  rain,  _ 
And  sighing  harken  sighs  and  mute  feel  silence, 
And  cold  stretch  forth  my  hand  into  the  snows, 
And  hating,  hear  the  laughter  of  the  wind 
Whose  mad  hands  tear  the  sky. 
But  now  again  the  promise  of  the  spring 
Shall  lift  my  martyred  spirit  from  the  dust, 
To  where  the  lilied  altar  shines  with  peace, 
And  the  white  priestess  comes 
Crowning  each  candle  with  a  gold  desire 
Engirdling  with  pallors 
The  forehead  of  a  divine  ghost. 
Ah,  but  they  die,  these  god9,  the  candles  dwindle 
And  spring  is  but  a  radiant  beckoning 
To  death  that  follows  slowly,  silently.    .   .    . 

O  flitting  swallows,  fleeting  laugh  of  wind, 

O  flash  of  silver  in  the  wings  of  dawn 

That  are  spread  out  and  elosed.      0  hush  ol   night 

Breathless  with  love,  oh  swish  of  whispering  title 

That  swells  and  shrinks  upon  the  dreaming  shore. 

O  gentle  eyes  of  children  wonder-wide 

137 


That  grow  too  soon  to  weariness  and  close; 

O  scuttling  run  of  rabbit  on  the  hills, 

And  flight  of  lazy  rooks  above  the  elm; 

O  birds'  eggs  frail,  tinged  faintly,  nestled  close, 

And  mystery  of  flower  in  the  bud. 

O  burning  galaxy  of  buttercups, 

And  drone  of  bees  above  the  pouting  rose, — 

0  twilit  lovers  stilled  with  reverie 

And  footprints  of  them  swerving  on  the  sand 
And  darkness  of  them  clasped  against  the  sky! 

1  see  beyond  the  glory  of  your  days 

The  grey  days  marching  one  behind  the  other 

To  the  bleak  tunes  of  silence. 

When  mists  shall  smear  the  radiance  of  the  moon 

And  the  lean  thief  shall  pass, 

Snatching  the  glittering  toys  away  from  love, 

Plucking  the  feathers  from  the  wings  of  peace. 

And  Life  herself,  grown  old  and  crooked  now, 

Shall  go  the  way  that  her  long  shadow  points, 

Her  long  black  shadow  down  the  roads  of  sleep. 

1918 


138 


TO  MY  FATHER 

I  CANNOT  think  that  you  have  gone  away, 
You  loved  the  earth — and  life  lit  up  your  eyes, 
And  flickered  in  your  smile  that  would  surmise 
Death  as  a  song,  a  poem,  or  a  play. 
You  were  reborn  afresh  with  every  day, 
And  baffled  fortune  in  some  new  disguise. 
Ah!  can  it  perish  when  the  body  dies, 
Such  youth,  such  love,  such  passion  to  be  gay? 

We  shall  not  see  you  come  to  us  and  leave 
A  conqueror — nor  catch  on  fairy  wing 
Some  slender  fancy — nor  new  wonders  weave 
Upon  the  loom  of  your  imagining. 
The  world  is  wearier,  grown  dark  to  grieve 
Her  child  that  was  a  pilgrim  and  a  king. 

1917 


i39 


TO  MY  MOTHER 

AT  evening  when  the  twilight  curtains  fall, 
Before  the  lamps  are  lit  within  my  room, 
My  memories  hang  bright  upon  the  gloom, 
Like  ancient  frescoes  painted  on  the  wall. 

And  I  can  hear  the  call  of  birds  and  bells 
And  shadowy  sound  of  waves,  and  wind  through  leaves 
And  wind  that  rustles  through  the  burnished  sheaves, 
And  far  off  voices  whispering  farewells. 

I  dream  again  the  joy  I  used  to  know 
While  straying  by  the  sea  that  hardly  sighed 
A  sorrow  in  my  singing,  as  the  tide 
Crept  up  to  clasp  me,  smiled,  and  let  me  go. 

And  I  remember  all  the  glad  lost  hours, 
The  racing  of  brown  rabbits  on  the  hill, 
The  winds  that  prowled  around  the  lonely  mill, 
Laburnum  laughter,  music  of  the  flowers. 

The  berries  plucked  with  loitering  delight, 
Staining  the  dusk  with  purple,  till  the  thought 
Of  starry  little  ghosts  behind  us  caught 
Our  hearts  and  made  us  fearful  of  the  night. 

The  London  evenings  huddled  in  the  rain 
Whose  misty  prisms  shone  with  lamplight  pale, 
Making  our  hearts  seem  sinister  and  frail, 
Fainting  our  thoughts  with  mystery  and  pain. 

I  have  a  world  of  memories  to  dream, 
To  touch  with  loving  fingers  as  a  sigh 
Revives  a  little  flame  and  lets  it  die. 
Ah,  were  the  days  as  lovely  as  they  seem 
140 


Now  that  they  look  so  peaceful  lying  dead? 
And  is  it  all  the  hope  of  Joy  we  have, 
The  broken  trophies  of  the  things  she  gave 
And  took  away  to  give  us  dreams  instead? 

The  things  we  love  and  lose  before  we  find 
The  way  to  love  them  well  enough  and  keep, 
That  now  are  woven  on  the  looms  of  sleep 
That  now  are  only  music  of  the  wind. 

1918 


141 


LONDON  grows  sad  at  evening, 
And  we  at  the  windows  sit 
To  watch  her  moods, 
Wearying  with  her. 

Even  a  noise  of  laughter  from  the  street 
Sounds  in  our  ears 

Like  something  dropped  and  shattered  on  the  stone. 
Then  her  musician  comes, 
A  wandering,  malicious  spirit; 
The  organ  grinder,  playing  those  old  tunes 
We  know  too  well, 
That  hurt  us  with  fatigue. 
Till  Hope  like  a  harlequin, 
His  glitter  hidden  in  a  ragged  coat, 
The  lamplighter,  goes  by, 
Planting  his  pale  flames  in  the  dusk. 

1918 


142 


AH !  the  spring, 
Sudden,  surprising, 
Melting  the  iron  scales  around  the  heart 
As  the  earliest  sun 

Melts  the  cold  case  of  dew  on  leaves — 
Ah!  the  streets  like  odorous  rivers 
Chanting  the  echoes  of  seas — 
Ah!  the  flowers  in  shop-windows 
Beseeching,  persuasive, 
Reluctant  to  let  their  beauty  flow  away 
From  thoughts  that  mirror  them  in  passing — • 
Beautiful  exiles 
Fluttering  in  their  chains, 
Thrilled  with  the  noise  of  bees, 
The  music  of  meadows 
Still  hovering  around  them — 
Flower  fingers,  flower-touches, 
Passional,  reminiscent, 
Rippling  the  soul's  still  waters — 
Flower  galaxies, 

Enamelled  bridges  arching  from  dream  to  dream, 
Garlands  splashing  over  the  eyes  of  satyrs, 
The  furtive  woodland  eyes, 
The  pointed  inquisitive  cars — 
Pallid  flowers  foaming  on  hill-crests, 
Gushing  heavenwards 
From  a  sea  of  stormy  mountains — 
Opening  and  shutting  exquisite  doors, 
As  the  senses  open  to  music, 
Shut  upon  silence, 
Open  to  beauty, 
Close  their  caskets  upon  love — ■ 
Ah!  the-  flowers  in  the  windows, 
Amorous  of  poets 
Making  a  chaplet  of  song! 
1919 
H3 


THE  UNDERTONE  OF  THE  VOLGA  BOAT  SONG 

OGod, 
We  have  nothing  to  give  Thee, 
We  are  as  fog  that  drifts  on  the  river, 
As  the  wailing  of  voices  blown  through  mist — i 
We  are  as  those  that  carry  bags  of  dust 
Heaping  them  with  the  dust — 
We  are  covered  with  the  dust  of  days, 
We  are  pale  from  the  dust  of  dreamless  nights 
Shaken  before  we  were  rested — 
At  dawn  we  are  found  by  the  sun 
Adrift,  labouring,  thinking  of  nothing — 
Our  wine  is  bitter,  it  has  made  us  drunk, 
Our  bread  is  coarse, 

We  are  always  athirst  and  hungry.  .  .  . 
O  God,  we  have  been  patient, 
We  have  grown  old  in  weariness, 
Our  lives  are  as  the  labouring  of  the  wind — ■ 
We  are  huddled  together  in  the  dawn, 
The  sleeping  houses  pass  us, 
The  dawn  is  a  field  of  nettles 
Stinging  us  from  rest.  .  .  . 
O  God, 

We  have  nothing  to  give  Thee  but  patience, 
We  have  suffered  evil  and  believed  Thee  good, 
Thy  face  is  the  gentleness  of  the  distance, 
The  river  is  placid  with  the  thought  of  Thee — 
Our  tears  have  washed  us  harder  than  the  rocks, 
And  like  the  rocks  we  wait, 
Grow  old  with  waiting.  .  .  . 
Weariness,  the  river 
Flowing  through  banks  of  sleep.   .  .  . 
O  God,  we  have  nothing  to  give  Thee, 
Take  our  great  weariness, 
We  that  have  never  lived  and  never  slept, 
Take  our  long  weariness,  O  God!   .  .  . 
1919 
144 


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